


Redemption

by snack_size



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Developing Relationship, Drift Bond, F/M, Jaeger Pilots, M/M, Multiple Pov, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, The Drift (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-05
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-31 14:31:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1032788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snack_size/pseuds/snack_size
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marshal Nick Fury and Major Phil Coulson have just assumed control of a SHIELD Shatterdome with three Jaegers and one pilot. As the kaiju attacks increase in frequency they are forced to work with pilots who the program has deemed unfit to jockey, including Natasha Romanov, Thor Odinsen, and Steve Rogers. They've also got to manage a newly formed K-Science division under the oversight of Jaeger engineer Tony Stark.</p>
<p>Relationships develop amongst the pilots, scientists and officials as they try to prepare for themselves for the next kaiju to emerge from the Breach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Art/fanmix made by the wonderful sullacat [here!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1032017) Go check it out, it's absolutely great, really captures the mood, and is perfect to listen to alongside reading.
> 
> This is a Pacific Rim fusion - and will probably work best if you've seen the movie. Basically Jaegers are giant robots built to combat giant monsters, the kaiju, that are coming out of an interdimensional Breach in the Pacific Ocean. Two pilots have to connect via a complete neural connection, called the Drift, that requires they completely share themselves with the other person.
> 
> There are mentions of characters from Pacific Rim to fill out the universe, but none actually appear here - and hopefully you'll enjoy some of the Easter Eggs.

**Coulson**

“Sir.” Coulson had been surprised to get the summons to the Marshal’s office for an urgent meeting - they hadn’t dealt with a kaiju strike in two months and the Shatterdome was running at maximum efficiency. Well, maximum efficiency for a Shatterdome.

“Have a seat, Major,” said the Marshall. “The leaders of the Defense Corps have commended both of us on the job we’ve done here.”

“Well, that’s unexpected,” Coulson replied. Fury nodded, his lip arching slightly - as much of a smile as you could get from the man.

“So much so,” he added, “that we’re getting sent to Los Angeles to assume command immediately.” Coulson couldn’t help raise his eyebrows, though he managed to hold his mouth so he didn’t look completely appalled at the prospect. “My reaction as well,” Fury said.

“They have taken several catastrophic hits lately,” Coulson said. “Are they even equipped-”

“That’s where the fun part is, Major,” Fury said. “They’ve got two pilots and four functional Jaegers -one Mark-II, two Mark-III, one Mark-IV.”

“Oh,” said Coulson. “Barton and Rhodes are in Iron Patriot.” Fury knew this, of course. He was thinking out loud - one of the few remaining Mark-I’s in operation, largely thanks to the fact that it had two of the best pilots in the corps. Coulson had been amongst those surprised when the Air Force Colonel and...well, Barton couldn’t be summarized easily. Coulson had overseen his training directly - runaway, circus performer, hitman turned CIA agent. But he and Rhodes had practically danced with each other in the kwoon and had an excellent neural handshake.

“They’ve only got the Jaegers because they’ve got Stark,” Fury added. Coulson closed his eyes - he had heard reports from colleagues in Los Angeles about the billionaire weapons manufacture turned Jaeger engineer and designer. “We’re going to find them four new pilots - Command doesn’t want to get the Mark-IV dirty yet, even though Stark is itching to send her out.”

“I’ll begin assembling a list,” Coulson replied - he didn’t know where he was going to get it from. Nearly every pilot was deployed somewhere. They had twenty Jaegers in operation currently at the various Shatterdomes. There were recruits, of course, but...

“I requested that we be allowed to bring Hill and Sitwell with us,” Fury added. Coulson nodded - they would need someone to run day-to-day operations while they attempted to locate pilots. “Get packed, Major. We’re leaving tomorrow.”

“Thank you sir,” Coulson said. “I look forward to the challenge.”

* * *

**Clint**

“Well, look at this,” Tony said, eyes on his tablet. Rhodey smacked at his hand - he was constantly trying to get Stark to put the thing down while they were eating. It was like invading Russia in the winter, as far as Clint could tell. “We’re getting new management.”

Clint immediately perked up - _about fucking time_ , he thought. Every time he walked by the Jaeger Bay and saw those three machines just sitting there he wanted to get on one of the conference calls with the SHIELD Council and tell them how stupid they were.

“Marshall Fury,” said Tony. “And some Major Coulson.” Rhodey met his eyes, and Clint smiled. “What, you used to date the guy?”

“Trained me,” Clint replied. “Pretty much trained everyone, back then - before Fury picked him up and he got promoted.” He met Tony’s gaze, and Rhodey nodded to verify that.

“Knows his shit,” Rhodey said.

“But he never jockeyed,” Tony said. They both shook their head, and Clint could see Tony try to formulate how the pilots still respected him. Clint shrugged - there were certain things that you couldn’t work through with sheer logic. He’d tried to tell Tony that piloting a Jaeger was one of those, but Tony had absolutely refused to listen to him. But Tony didn’t understand the drift - had never gone into another person’s head. And Coulson might never have jockeyed, but he had been integral to the development of the drift technology and its implementation in the Jaegers. It occurred to Clint that he didn’t actually know the full story, why Coulson never got a Jaeger - he shook it off, though. There were more important things to think about.

“Right, well, this is good, then,” Tony said. “Everyone realizes that where I am is the center of the SHIELD universe.”

“About fucking time,” Rhodey said, and Clint grinned slightly.

“Plus, maybe if they move the big guys here we’ll get better rations.”

“We’d get better fucking rations if you kept some more of your damn money-” Rhodey began. Clint rolled his eyes. Stark had basically incorporated Stark Industries into SHIELD after the third Kaiju attack took out his Malibu house, amongst a good portion of the greater Los Angeles area. And he put some of his personal fortune straight into the Jaegers he helped design - not that it was that big of a sacrifice, according to Rhodey and what Clint picked up in the drift. Building giant robots that fought monster/aliens/whatever those things were was pretty much Tony’s engineering wet dream.

“It wouldn’t be fair, you know that,” Tony said, and poked at his portion of brown meat and shook his head. “A more productive discussion - where the hell are they going to find four Jaeger pilots?”

“Recruits,” Rhodey said. “All we have.”

“They’re not going to put recruits into my baby,” Tony said. He seemed visibly upset by the suggestion, his lip twitching, making his facial hair dance. The Mark-IV hadn’t been named yet, so it was only known as My Baby, Tony’s Baby, or Stark’s Baby, depending on who was referring to it. “Besides, I made her for you two.”

Clint shrugged. It felt a bit like a betrayal, itching to get into the new Jaeger. Iron Patriot had served him and Rhodes well - Rhodey had been in him a lot longer, Clint had only had three runs after he’d replaced Lancing when he was injured.

“Oh, well, looks like we’re taking over for Lima as Shatterdome Number 2 - see, maybe my influence is worth something...three new scientists are getting shipped in as well.” Tony scrolled, eyes darting as he read quickly. “Jane Foster and Eric Selvig-”

“They’re the astrophysicists that work on the breach, right?” Rhodey asked. Tony nodded.

“And Bruce fucking Banner.” Tony nodded his head, considering this. Rhodes shook his, and Clint was oblivious. He tried to stay out of all the personnel gossip. “Oh, come on, Rhodes, the guy that blew up the Gamma Lab at Harvard, trying to figure out Kaiju anatomy? The one they fucking quarantined for six months because they were convinced he was going to grow tentacles or some shit - mostly so that Ross could get him away from his daughter?”

“Oh, yeah,” Rhodey said. “But I thought the last part was just-”

“You sure know a lot about these guys,” Clint interrupted.

“Science gossip,” Tony said. “Oh, come on, Barton, what the fuck do you think we talk about when we’re stuck in some Conn Pod rewiring after you get it all torn to shit?”

“Kaiju tears it to shit,” Clint said.

Tony shook his head.

* * *

**Coulson**

Coulson didn’t need to have ever drifted with Fury to know what he was thinking now. Outwardly, Fury just inhaled and began calmly issuing orders to get Iron Patriot out and headed to intercept the latest Kaiju - Charbydis, which amused Coulson for about one second until he considered why some mythology nerd had probably pulled out the moniker. “Level II,” Hill read from the LOCCENT display. “Will hit the San Diego metro area in one and half hours at current pace. Readying Iron Patriot for deployment. You’ve got support coming in from Chrome Brutus, but they won’t arrive for another hour.”

Inwardly, though, Fury was probably thinking something along the lines of - First fucking day, and we’ve got a fucking Kaiju to deal with. Coulson had only really heard him swear a few times, but it had given him a good sense of his inner monologue.

“Roger that, Major Hill,” Rhodes replied.

“Iron Patriot is ready for the big drop,” Barton said, and Coulson could almost hear a smile in his voice as they prepared to send the Conn Pod of the Jaeger down to meet it’s body.

It was a standard operation, at least. Once Brutus came in they were able to end the kaiju quickly. There were a few close calls, a few tense moments - the neural bridge started to waver, at some point, on Barton’s end, but Rhodes pulled him back.

Rhodes could hold anyone, really. He was the one pilot in the pool that they knew they would have no problem placing with someone. Universal drift compatibility, they pronounced at the Academy, a little bit awed - only one other pilot had that, down in Sydney. Coulson figured it was his calm demeanor, his discipline, his intellect, the outward casual friendliness that coated a steel core. Or, as Coulson once told Fury, you didn’t need to look any further to the fact that the man had been friends with Stark for almost twenty years and hadn’t killed him to understand it.

Everyone applauded, as was customary when pilots got another kill, and they reset their clock. The attacks were getting more frequent. The astrophysicists they had en route, working with a mathematician, had produced a model that predicted this. Coulson glanced towards the three Jaegers in their bay and pressed his lips together.

He pushed his worry aside - Shatterdome morale required a day to celebrate. You had to take what you got. He went with Fury to meet the pilots in the receiving bay.

“Nice job, gentlemen,” Fury said. He shook each of their hands. “Marshall Fury. Interruption prevented us from being properly introduced.”

“Welcome to Los Angeles, sir,” Barton said. Rhodes just nodded - he looked a little ill. After effects of the drift, it seemed. He had carried Barton’s slip.

“We’ll talk more after you go through medical scanning,” Fury said.

Rhodes raised both eyebrows and looked off to the side. Coulson thought back to his files, and hadn’t there been something that he had wondered about - _shit,_ Coulson thought, _shit, shit._ Because how many missions had he run between the Mark-I and Mark-II? Six, seven. More than Fury, before he was pulled.

“Something you need to tell us, Rhodes?” Fury asked.

Rhodes looked down at the floor and pressed his lips together. “Sir,” he said. “You may find that my medical records are...absent a few scans.”

“Goddamnit, Rhodey,” Barton said, and there was a moment of twisted anger and concern on his face.

“I don’t need you telling me.” Rhodes said.

“No, you’ll get it from Stark,” Barton said. He now looked about as ill as his partner.

“Let’s go to medical, gentlemen,” Fury said.

Rhodes did get it from Stark, and then some - Coulson had forgot how much of a room Start could fell up. When he met them in medical he looked like he was going to punch someone. Or like he really needed to blow something up. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Rhodes shrugged and stared at him - they would drift so well, Coulson couldn’t help but think. Barton seemed to share the same thought, as he slumped in a chair in the corner. “Gotta save the world,” Rhodes said. “Besides, what’s more likely to get me first?”

“You stupid son of a bitch,” Stark said, and slammed his hand against the hospital wall. “Fuck! Ow! Rhodey - you’re going to get yourself...you stupid, reckless-”

He stopped when a woman entered the room - Coulson saw her heels first, following the sound against the tiled floor. He was relieved to see them connected to Pepper Potts, Stark’s former assistant turned CEO who now managed all of SHIELD’s Western Rim external relations as well as the general operation of the Los Angeles Shatterdome. Or, as Coulson had told Fury, she held the damn place together. “Rhodey,” she said. “James.”

He grimaced at her, then looked at Fury. Fury shook his head. “I’m sorry, Colonel, but you’re grounded. Levels are too high.”

“Sir, I don’t-”

“You think we wouldn’t fight it if we could?” Fury asked, eyes narrowed. He had to be thinking of Vancouver, of Karloff, of how he had taken Brawler Yukon out and ended the Kaiju in several decisive blows. Or any of his victories since then. And he probably was thinking of all the friends and fellow Rangers he knew who had died from cancer. “You’ll be working with Major Coulson and I. We have a lot of pilots to find.”

“Sir,” said Ms. Potts - though it would probably do, Coulson thought, to give her some kind of title,, “I have developed a list of all pilots currently without assignment and a separate list of promising recruits.”

“She’s the best,” Stark said, and gave her a slight smile. Coulson tilted his head a degree and looked over at Barton - it was cheating, but he had a lot he needed to get up to speed on.

He’d dealt with Potts, of course, but they had never been in the same Shatterdome together. Barton gave him a slight nod. Not that it was some social faux paus - you just accepted, if you were close to a pilot, that people would know things about you. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it made Coulson’s job a lot easier and he didn’t have to try and pull a team together. Sometimes it blew up your face - not for him, thank God. But Vladivostock...he shuddered.

“Thank you, Ms. Potts,” Fury said. “You might as well join us in the conference room, then, at 1500?” She nodded.

* * *

**Clint**

“I’m going,” Clint said. He intercepted Coulson in the hallway - he had followed him and waited for his chance. Coulson was on his way to greet their new super science team, so he wasn’t anticipating an ambush.

“Going where?” Coulson asked.

“To your pilot selection meeting,” Clint said. “Just so you know.”

“You have someone in mind?” Coulson asked. Clint looked at his face, wondering what he was asking.

“Perhaps, sir,” he said. “And I think I deserve input, since I’m going to be-”

“I completely agree,” Coulson said. “You might as well come be part of the welcoming crew.”

He didn’t say anything to Clint as they walked, and Clint wanted to say a lot of things but found they couldn’t come out - mostly because he was pissed.

He understood, of course. He would have done the same thing, if his levels started to get high. They already had three useless Jaegers - and Rhodey had been in the program almost since the beginning, had dedicated himself to it. Like anyone who jockeyed, it meant he knew things were going to end for him, soon, one way or another. So why not go out fighting?

Clint leaned against the wall while the helicopter came in with their new science crew. He’d read up on them - the astrophysicists were SHIELD’s point people on the Breach research, working alongside Gottlieb in Hong Kong and using his theoretical models to figure out how to close the damn thing. Under the supposition, of course, that it was some kind of inter-dimensional or space related phenomena. Banner, on the other hand - the whole thing had been a good idea, but also an incredibly stupid one. There was an incredible need to know about the kaiju and their biology, but from what Clint had read, he’d taken a great risk to his own personal safety in the experiment he could run.

Not that Clint could really judge.

Clint watched as Eric Selvig got off first, followed by Jane Foster and then a young, dark-haired woman. She hadn’t been in the file - presumably some assistant. Coulson made a slight sound, which indicated she was completely unanticipated.

“Banner looks like he thinks we’re going to tranq him and put him in a cage,” Clint said.

“To be fair,” Coulson said, “they basically did that after his gamma accident.” Clint shook his head, not sure what they had been thinking. Well, at first it was justified - they had to treat his radiation poisoning and burns, but then, after that was taken care of...it wasn’t like Banner was going to turn into some big, green monster.

Coulson walked towards them, targeting Foster and Selvig, presumably because he needed to find out who their accomplice was. Clint followed. “Major Coulson, and Ranger Barton,” he said.

“Jane Foster,” she replied. She was tiny, and her enormous sweater only emphasized it. “And this is our assistant, Darcy Lewis.” The dark haired woman nudged her glasses up and smiled.

“I wasn’t aware you were-” Coulson stopped when he saw Clint approach Banner, who was turning in circles a bit and looking around at everyone holding guns.

“Dr. Banner,” Clint said, and held out his hand. “Real pleasure. Stark’s been raving about you since he heard.”

“Oh, well, that’s...” Banner said, and held out a tentative hand. His purple shirt and slacks were completely rumpled. “That’s great, though I’m not an engineer.”

“Word is you can help close the Breach,” Clint said.

“Ah,” said Banner. “And that’s the only one?”

“Only one we care about,” Coulson said. “Major Coulson.”

“Nice to meet you,” Banner said. Coulson turned on his heel to continue asking about Lewis, but the three of them had already got out of the room.

They weren’t going to give her up easy, Clint thought - and he wondered why. There usually had to be a solid justification to put someone on personnel rations and get them housing.

* * *

**Coulson**

Ms. Potts - Pepper, Coulson corrected himself, and he had been pleased with the casual efficiency with which she ran all of her operations - stood in front of them with slides that matched the print outs she had put together in folders for all of them. Coulson appreciated the throw-back. His eyes got tired from staring at a tablet all day. When, he had to wonder, had he become old?

“First,” said Pepper, “we have a candidate from China, Chen Lau - he is back-up at Hong Kong.”

Coulson shrugged - from what he saw in his file, the man seemed to have a good, clean record. “And from Tokyo, there is Alana Morgenstern.”

“The Israeli?” Clint asked, and Pepper nodded. “I thought she was in Coyote Tango.”

“Coyote Tango is undergoing assessment for whether it will be repaired or decommissioned,” said Pepper. “And given our need...”

“Who else?” Fury asked.

“Well,” said Pepper. “Those are the two most viable candidates. The others...I might suggest we try some trainees.” Fury raised both his eyebrows at her. “Well, there’s Natasha Romanoff in Vladivostock-”

Coulson closed his eyes. Romanoff, like several of the other Russian pilots, had come from a top-secret military program that had worked to produce spies and assassins. They’d been sent to the Jaeger program when the call had come out. Physically, she had what was necessary - and more than that, and had been an exemplary pilot when she had been with her counterpart from the program - but when they had tried to get her to Drift with another pilot, a regular Russian military officer…

“No,” Fury said. Coulson nodded.

“The Russians are willing-”

“Of course they are, they’ve just got themselves back on their feet after-”

“I want to try Romanoff,” Clint said, voice loud. “She was unmatched in Eden Assassin until-”

“No,” said Coulson, more vehemently. There was no way he was going to let anyone try and Drift with her fractured psyche. Khulikov was still drooling on himself.

“We fought alongside her in Alaska, that Category III,” Clint said, looking over at Rhodey.

“The scary blonde or the scary red head?” Rhodes asked, even though he knew. He was thinking about it. Coulson shot him a look.

“Red head,” Clint replied. “The blonde married the giant.” Rhodey cocked his head to the side. Coulson knew the feeling. He didn’t really want to think about how that worked. “Look, she saved our ass.”

“She did,” Rhodes said. “Kaiju was going to rip us in two if she hadn’t some got that Jaeger to move like a ballerina.”

“Bring her in,” Clint said, looking directly at Coulson. “It can’t hurt to spar - to do psych. Doesn’t mean you’re going to have to make someone drift with her.”

“Fine,” Fury said, then nodded at Potts, who pressed the button on her clicker to advance to the next frame. He sighed. “And you have more candidates who are less desirable than-”

Pepper winced. “Steve Rogers and Thor Odinson, sir.”

“Talk about scrambled brains,” Clint said, leaning back.

“Which one is which again?” Rhodes asked.

Coulson sighed - Rogers. Nothing they could have done there, though. He and Barnes had drifted at almost 100% compatibility, two Army kids out of Brooklyn who had been friends since birth. No one put any faith in them when they started the program, but they had been seamless together. And then Barnes had been ripped out of the cockpit while Rogers was still connected to him. The resulting neurological impact had confounded even their best doctors and psychologists.

“Where is he now?” Fury asked.

Pepper winced. “He was in a medically induced coma for almost half a year, but they’ve pulled him out as of two weeks ago. His CNS is intact. He’ll need to get back in fighting condition, but…”

“Fuck,” said Clint.

“Bring him in,” said Coulson.

“Seriously?” said Clint.

“You want an ex-Russian assassin who might have Dissociative Identity Disorder,” Rhodey said, “we can probably make room for one of the guys who piloted Howling Commando.”

“Odinsen,” Coulsen continued, after a moment of silence, “piloted Frost Giant out of the Icebox with his brother, Loki.”

“Once,” said Fury.

“Brother went beserker, right?” Rhodes asked.

“Drift took them down deep, for some reason,” Coulson said, “despite numerous successful tests - once they got into the Jaeger. Loki basicaly pulled everything out of Thor’s head and played with it like it was silly putty-”

“Some sort of deep seated issues there,” Clint added.

“Right, but more than that, had to be,” Coulson said. “And they had to bring in Eden Assassin to take out the Kaiju while Loki took a stroll through his brother’s head - and almost took out half of Anchorage when he lost control because of it.” Clint nodded at him, wanted to emphasize - Eden Assassin.

“Odinsen’s psych tests are still currently...” Pepper said. “But I think he has a strong urge for redemption. His doctor said he wants to make it up to all the people who died because Loki failed them.”

“Fine,” said Fury. “Any others?”

“Recruits next, sir,” Pepper said.

“Fuck,” said Fury.


	2. Chapter 2

**Tony**

“Welcome to R&D Candyland,” Tony said, and smiled when he saw the eyebrows raise on the three scientists. He may have put some of his own money into the lab. “Say hello to our new friends, DUM-E, U.”

“Oh, they’re cute,” said the unexpected assistant, Ms. Lewis. She raised her hand to DUM-E as he approached her. “High five?” DUM-E met it, and she grinned. “Low five? Oh yeah!”

“That’s remarkable,” Selvig said. He looked around and smiled. “This is remarkable.”

“So, this is primarily designed for engineering,” Tony said, “but we cleared out some space where you guys can do what you do - figured you weren’t going to blow to many things up, so...” He made eye contact with Banner, who was still hanging in the doorway.

“Dr. Banner,” he said. “Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I deeply respect the fact that you irradiated yourself with a bunch of kaiju parts in the name of science.”

“Huh,” said Banner, and he shook his hand with the lightest grip Tony had felt in some time.

“You have any projects going on?” Tony asked. Banner looked back at him, eyes slightly wide, probably wondering if Tony somehow hadn’t been told that he’d just been released from six months in heavy quarantine where he was treated like a medical experiment. “We’ve got this arc reactor tech, used it with the first baby-sized Jaeger prototypes while we worked on the neural drift - but I want to make big ones, that we can put in the actual Jaegers-”

“Oh,” Banner said. “So what’s the problem?”

“Metal that powers them - palladium - burns too fast, too hard for the big machine. Need something better.”

“But with similar properties,” Banner said, considering it. “You’re looking for, what, the same vibration speed or the same electromagnetic properties? Because it would depend, on where in the timing of the reaction you’re generating the energy from.” He shrugged, as though this was just a casual insight. Tony grinned at him - he hadn’t even thought of this, but it made perfect sense. “Either way, you’re going to have to synthesize something.”

“Sure,” said Tony. “Let’s invent a new element. Come on, lets play.”

“Or a new alloy,” Banner said. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“We might need to,” Tony said, and started walking back to his side of the lab. Banner at least followed behind him. “Pilot trials are set to take two weeks and I want arc reactors in those bad boys before anyone new steps into them.”

“Hmm,” said Banner. “Eh. Sure, why not? You have any coffee?”

“Do I have any coffee - DUM-E, stop flirting with Ms. Lewis, we’ve got work to do.”

After two hours with Bruce, Tony noticed that four chalkboards had been brought into the lab, and that a fifth was being added. “Seriously?” he said. He actually felt completely offended. He stood up and walked over to them. “Do you need me to get someone from IT up here to give you a tour of the software suite, the holographic imaging displays, because-”

“I like to do my calculations in chalk,” Dr. Foster replied. Her eyes narrowed and she glanced over at Lewis and Selvig, both who nodded as they sipped at their coffee.

“Is that a fucking corkboard?” Tony asked, and his eyes widened as he looked at the wall. “Two fucking corkboards - and...pins?”

“Breach pictures,” said Ms. Lewis, and she lifted her leg to point to an actual folder with actual pictures in them. Tony twitched, slightly.

Dr. Banner laughed and seemed to startle himself with it. “Uh…” he said, when they all turned and looked at him. He widened his eyes.

“Do you see this?” Tony asked. Dr. Banner shrugged, as if to say, to each his own, which was a little too damn zen for Tony. _Fuck,_ he thought, _Pepper was going to be right again with her whole, Tony, you know you don’t really share lab space well - you’ll have a line in tape down the center in no time._ He inhaled. He exhaled. They would be fine.

The service door swung open and two techs walked in with a giant bakers rack full of tissue samples in huge jars and clear boxes. “This is just about everything we have in storage, Dr. Banner,” said one of the techs.

“Oh, great,” Banner said. “Oh, is that a pituitary gland - oh, that’s great-”

“Just about?” Tony asked, because it was already a lot of kaiju sample parts - between them, the chalkboards, the robots-

“And this,” said another tech, using a cantilever to bring in an enormous box with a...Tony could not even tell you what it was, and he’d studied kaiju anatomy a bit.

“A proto-pancreas! Fantastic,” said Banner, grinning. He looked over at Tony. “We call them that, you know, they’re not really pancreatic, uh, but the closest we can approximate to our own biology, and...which kaiju is that from?”

“Abomination,” said the tech. Banner’s mouth twitched slightly - those were the samples he’d been working on during his accident.

“What are you going to do with that?” Tony asked, which he figured was more important, because he could just see what a mess it was going to make if Banner was going to-

“Dissect it,” Banner said. “Oh, over there, I guess.” He waved his hand at the space that Tony had set aside for him - one exam table, one desk, one computer. “Might need another, ah, table. Tables?” He winced at Tony. “Room?”

“Do not, I repeat, do not, even think of getting kaiju bits near my side of the lab,” Tony said. “Hey, you - can you order some extra sanitizer?”

“I’m not in supply, Mr. Stark,” said one of the techs. “You’ll have to talk to Lt. Douglas-” Tony closed his eyes and inhaled.

“Uh, since none of my instruments have arrived yet,” Banner said, “we could get back to that, uh, palladium problem you’ve got.”

* * *

**Coulson**

Coulson agreed with Fury that there was no need to make a big production out of the pilot’s arrivals. Coulson and Rhodes personally greeted them.

Odinsen proved easy enough - he was much more relaxed and genial than a man who had been through what he had should be. Coulson was impressed. They had found Odinsen up in Alaska, working on the Wall. Despite the fact that he’d been trying to hide he had been relieved when Sitwell had taken him out for breakfast at the only local place that had was known to have real coffee.

He’d quickly accepted the offer for redemption. _Good thing, too_ , Sitwell wrote in his e-mail, _was gonna suck to have to taser someone that bring and drag him in._ Odinsen arrived with a single bag.

Rogers came in next, towards evening. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Captain,” Coulson said.

“I’m sorry sir, I’m familiar with you, but don’t think we’ve met.”

Coulson winced. “No,” he said. “Uh. I was there at your recovery, actually. You were in a coma…” Rhodes shook his head and, saving Coulson from further embarrassment, offered Rogers his hand.

“James Rhodes,” he said. Rogers immediately stood straight, saluted him.

“At ease, soldier,” he said. “You and I, we’re both Rangers.”

“All right,” said Rogers, though he still looked a bit uneasy. Probably because Coulson had just come across as a ridiculous creeper. “I appreciate that.”

Coulson was impressed with Rogers appearance - he looked good for someone just out of a coma and didn’t appear to have too much muscle atrophy. But then again, Rogers seemed to be one of those people who built muscle easily.

“Rhodes will see you to your quarters,” Coulson said - if possible, Rogers had brought less with him than Odinsen. Maybe not, though, since Odinsen had arrived with several large, thick wool knit sweaters. Coulson didn’t know how he thought they would serve him well in Los Angeles, but Odinsen seemed rather attached to them.

Rhodey turned back, briefly, as he walked with Rogers next to him and rolled his eyes at Coulson. _Right,_ Coulson thought, _make better first impressions._

Romanoff came in soon after. She had a military escort, which was a little old, since joining SHIELD was supposed to mean that you gave up all prior military ties. The Russians, of course, were the ones most reluctant to see things this way - especially, it seemed, when it came to their old special agents.

“Ranger,” Coulson said, and extended his hand to her. “Major Coulson.”

The escort looked at her. It appeared to be some kind of prompt - time to engage in normal human interactions.

“Hello, sir,” Romanoff said. She did not extend her hand.

For someone with the reputation she had, she was relatively unexceptional looking - short, and she wasn’t helping by being as hunched as she was. She had not been taking care of herself, either, or hadn’t been provided with the means too. Dark roots were very visible against her brilliant signature red hair color. She had dark circles under her eyes and while it appeared she’d kept her fitness up she still seemed fragile.

“It’s a pleasure to have you in Los Angeles,” Coulson said.

“Her English is not very good,” said the escort. “You have a translator?”

“Yes,” Coulson replied. Potentially. The Russians were a major presence within SHIELD, they had to have someone around who could facilitate.

“She is yours now, then,” said the escort, and gave him a slight, slimy grin. Coulson responded in kind.

He didn’t realize until her escort stepped back towards the helicopter bay that Romanoff had nothing with her. “Let me show you to your quarters,” he said. “And we can get someone from requisitions to help you get together essentials.”

“Thank you,” she said, and Coulson got the sense that she probably knew a lot more English than her escort may have believed.

* * *

**Thor**

The Los Angeles Shatterdome was quite different from the one in Anchorage. They had three Jaegers there and everything you touched had felt cold. The identity of the place was forged on being SHIELD’s Northernmost outpost - the forgotten outpost, yet the one that had attracted a good deal of press for its two star pairs of brothers.

You could be the third Becket, a reporter had joked during an interview with all four of them, and Thor did not need to look at Loki to know what expression was on his face. Another reporter would dub the two of them fire and ice because Thor had been warm and passionate during their interviews where Loki had been distant, sarcastic, difficult.

They barely got time to integrate with anyone at the facility. It was protocol for the newest Jaeger team to be on-call. When it was clear that the Swedes would be the one to intercept the latest Category III, someone in the Marinas with a sense of humor and perhaps too much time on their hands - though what else might you do out there? - named the kaiju Jotunn.

Loki had laughed when Tendo Choi announced the name from LOCCENT. He turned and grinned at Thor before a tech placed the helmet on his head and connected it to the spine of his drive suit. Thor had grinned back, ready for their first real fight - ready to prove themselves.

Thor sighed at the memory. He pushed aside the rest of what had happened - he had learned to do that well enough working on the wall.

Los Angeles, in contrast to Anchorage, felt vibrant and alive. It was newly infused with personnel, scientists, and more crew members for the three Jaegers about to come online. Beautiful Jaegers, all of them, and it was clear Tony Stark’s hand was involved. Even the massive bulk of the Mark-IV was elegant in its largess.

“He knows what he’s doing, that’s for sure,” came from behind him, and Thor turned and smiled at Clint Barton.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Ranger Barton,” Thor said, and extended his hand. Clint shook it and smiled at him. Thor had not been sure what type of reception he would get given what he had done, what he had allowed to happen, what he had ridden along for, screaming, pleading with his brother to release him, to please just stop this madness.

Thor could tell from Barton’s expression he had slipped for a moment. “Makes you feel any better, everyone we’ve pulled in is a bit of a headcase,” he said. “Fuck, to get into one of those things...you’ve got to have something, right?”

Thor smiled, because he appreciated the effort. He would not have said that about himself, before - his desire to pilot a Jaeger had been all bravado. He wanted to be the hero, the one who saved the world. He had been such a foolish boy - he had no idea what an impairment those desires were.

“You’re from Sweden, right?” Barton asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “We - I - were among the many who joined when the call came…”

“Right,” said Barton, sensing Thor’s reluctance to speak about his circumstances further. “You getting settled all right?”

“I suppose so,” said Thor. “I foolishly packed several sweaters, I...perhaps I have been in Alaska and Sweden for too long. I knew we were on a beach, but…” He tried to smile and it felt alien on his face.

“Yeah, too bad it’s fucked by kaiju blue,” Barton replied. “Anyone give you a tour?”

“That would be much appreciated, Ranger Barton.”

“Please, Clint,” he said. He took him to each of the Jaeger bays and introduced him to their crews, showed him the gym and the kwoon, the cafeteria. “Should probably take you to meet Stark - he’ll be the one ranting and raving at you about touching his kids, though the Mark-IV is really his baby.”

“Yes,” Thor said. “I have heard that.”

He did not expect that the Research and Development Unit would be so crowded. Apparently Los Angeles had only recently received an infusion of scientists, and so they were still sorting out their working spaces.

There was a bit of a chaotic scene when he and Barton entered. Stark was red in the face and doing his best not to yell at a curly haired man wearing every part of a biohazard suit save for the head. “Banner, I love you like a brother, I swear, but please do not get kaiju entrails on my side of the lab…”

“Is it?” Banner asked, and glanced over at a bit of goopy kaiju remains that had fallen off his table.

At the same time, a woman said, “You’re an only child, Stark, that statement doesn’t mean much.” Thor followed the voice to see a petite woman with her hair pulled back, wearing an oversized plaid shirt and covered in chalk dust. She made a sound when she caught his eye.

“Dr. Jane Foster,” said Barton. “Ranger Thor Odinsen - I was just giving him a tour, figured I’d introduce him to you, Stark, but if you’re not in the mood-”

“Well, fuck,” said Stark, narrowing his eyes at him. “You are a big boy...they have any trouble getting you in a Conn-Pod?”

“Not that I recall,” Thor said, swallowing thickly - and someday, his father said, the psychologists said, he would be able to speak of these things without feeling ill. And now they were going to put him in a Jaeger again. “Kaidanovsky is much larger.”

“Haven’t met him,” Stark said, and as he stepped closer. Thor surmised that his observation about Thor’s height had more to do with Stark’s own issues in that regard.

“He’s about seven foot,” said Barton.

“Jesus,” said Stark, “practically a Jaeger himself.”

“I’m sure no one has said that before,” Barton replied.

Thor was impressed with the easy back and forth between the two. In Anchorage, the scientists and Rangers had not really mixed, not even with the engineers as buffers.

“We’re out of coffee,” said Dr. Foster.

“We are not out of coffee,” said Stark. He glanced over at the empty coffee pot. “Oh, fuck, how did that happen?”

“I’ll go get some more,” she said.

“You, but make sure you get the good stuff,” Stark said. “I try not to pull privilege out too much, you know, funding this mess and all of that, but when it comes to the beans - Barton, you know where they keep them, right?”

“I do,” he said. “You mind a little trip over to supply?”

Thor glanced at Dr. Foster, who had somehow acquired some chalk dust on her nose since he had last looked at her. “No,” he replied. “I am very interested in learning more about this place.”

* * *

**Steve**

“Mark-IV, huh?” Steve said to himself, slowly walking through the Shatterdome’s Bay to look at the four Jaegers. Hell, when he’d been fighting, they had just started building the Mach-IIIs. Howling Commando had been one of the first, then Gipsy Danger.

“Where have you been?”

He turned - he had expected the Bay to be empty, or as empty as it could be, since people were always working on the Jaegers. He narrowed his eyes at the dark haired man with a very precisely shaped goatee. “Not paying attention,” he said. He held out his hand. “Steve Rogers.”

“Sleeping Beauty,” was the reply. Steve clenched his jaw. “Tony Stark, Chief Engineer-”

“I know who you are,” Steve said. “Pretty sure everyone does.”

“You missed out on most of Mark-III technology, too,” Tony said. He gestured with the wrench in his greased hand over to two Jaegers at the opposite side of the bay.

“You build it?” Steve asked, looking at the Mark-IV. Tony nodded. “Looks good.” It was sleek, but still heavy looking. It looked like it could do serious damage.

“More than good,” said Tony. “Could be better, but I’ve got to go through and try and figure out how to get the Arc Reactor technology into the Mark-IIIs.” Steve stared at him - to replace the nuclear core, he presumed but the Mark-II had corrected the previous issues with- “Yeah, no,” Tony said, and it was eerie how he knew what Steve had been thinking. “We just had to decommission a Mark-II pilot because he’d been zapped too much.”

“Rhodes?” Steve asked. He’d done training simulations with him and his partner a few times before Steve and Bucky had been deployed to Panama City. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well,” said Tony. “Lot of monsters to kill, not a lot of pilots to go around.”

Steve felt his hand clench, but then he released it. He wasn’t going to get back in a Jaeger decking Tony Stark. He didn’t know, he told himself. He has no idea.

 _He’s a prick,_ said another voice, and Steve inhaled, than exhaled. Bucky was always better with people like Stark.

Instead, Steve turned and walked back to his quarters.

* * *

**Coulson**

Coulson looked out at the group they had assembled - Alana Morgenstern, still wearing her Coyote Tango jacket and Chen Lau in the Hong Kong Shatterdome’s standard training attire. Both stood in the tight, hard posture you were taught on your first day in the kwoon. Coulson nodded at them. They were a little too self-assured. Not that he could blame them. They knew they were the most viable candidates.

Not to mention Coulson and Rhodes had rejected the four recruits he’d been referred before they even made it down - they were all good on paper, they had impressive simulator scores, but there wasn’t anyone yet who had done an actual test run in the Jaegers at Kodiak Island. They would turn to them only if really necessary.

So this left him with Thor Odinsen, wearing his new, lightweight Los Angeles training gear, Captain Steve Rogers, in his old Army fatigues, and Natasha Romanoff in the standard black of the Russians.

Clint and Rhodey stood beside him. Fury and Hill were in the Observation deck. “Welcome to Los Angeles,” Coulson said. “I’ve only just settled in myself. We’re going to start by running standard compatibility trials, first in the kwoon and then in the drift simulator. We have the kwoon today and tomorrow, simulators after that for as long as needed. Any questions?”

His potential pilots all stared at him with varying degrees of intensity. “Ranger Barton will be participating as well,” he said. “Colonel Rhodes will be observing.” He could see Rhodey blanche at the designation out of the corner of his eye. No longer a Ranger, he’d reverted to the Air Force Rank he held before he had joined SHIELD - they generally made it a practice of retaining people’s ranks.

“We’ll start with Rangers Morgenstern and Barton.” Fury wanted Barton to go with the two active Rangers first even though, in Coulson’s opinion, all of the testing they’d done on each of them indicated there was scant compatibility no matter what protocol you ran.

He wasn’t happy to be proven right. Clint’s style was fluid and gymnastic, though he was largely known for his patience - he was like a sniper. Morgenstern was much more explosive while Lau’s style was heavily influenced by the street-fighting Weis he’d been chosen to back-up, should they need it. Clint made eye contact with Coulson when he beat Lau, 3-2.

Coulson didn’t want to be seen as favoring him - hell, he knew there were a few rumors made by more astute members of Shatterdome personnel since he’d arrived. Or rumors that had followed them from Kodiak Island, when Coulson had trained him. More accurately, when Coulson had chosen him from the thousands of people who had submitted themselves to the program before they even had real Jaegers to put them.

Coulson sighed. There was little else to do in the L.A. Shatterdome these days, so he couldn’t begrudge everyone the romantic speculation. It had been the same in Lima - polls, bets, and odds on those who were most likely to hook up. Or whatever the parlance they were using these days.

“Next up, I’d like Morgenstern and Romanoff.” Morgenstern gave him a face. It confirmed what Coulson had concluded from her personality profile and the notes in her file. She had been good in Coyote Tango, but she acted as if she were one of the Jaeger program’s stars. Coulson had wanted to be objective about her, but it was definitely proving difficult.

He had never seen Romanoff fight before and had only reviewed her previous runs in Eden Assassin. He was still surprised - whoever said it was right, she moved like a ballerina. There was the grace and precision of a dancer there but also the harnessed power and explosive quality necessary for the complex leaps.

 _Barton,_ Rhodey scribbled on the pad he was holding. Coulson gave a slight nod as Rhodes kept writing. _He’s a sniper - she’s an assassin._ Coulson added the pairing to the top of the list for tomorrow, much as he didn’t want to.

He was relieved by the end of the day to at least have his suspicions confirmed that Rogers and Odinsen were compatible. They were both soldiers, both warriors - and while Rogers was more fluid and dynamic, there was strategy behind Odinsen’s movements. They pulled to a draw.

 _Get them to have dinner tonight_ , Rhodes wrote. He grinned at him.

 _Not exactly a date,_ Coulson replied, but Rhodes was good with people, so Coulson pulled out his phone and booked one of the private dining rooms that was used whenever they needed to entertain or impress.

* * *

**Thor**

“Captain Rogers,” Coulson said. “Lieutenant Odinsen.”

“A pleasure,” Thor said, and extended his hand towards the American. He had read much about him and the drops he’d made with his previous partner. Thor had thought he and Loki might be like that, with his work ethic and Loki’s intelligence.

“Absolutely,” Rogers replied, but with trepidation. And why not? How many lives had been lost because of Thor, because of Loki’s anger and spite? Thor shuddered, slightly, remembering how his brother’s emotions had coursed through him as Loki took charge of Sorcerer’s Bane.

And yet, despite that, Thor seemed to be regarded as less of a risk than the man whose coma and ostracism from the program had come from the brutality of the kaiju rather than his own weaknesses.  
Thor could not imagine the trauma that he had been through, piloting his Jaeger back to shore himself after feeling his partner die.

“I’ll leave you two to your dinner,” Major Coulson said. Thor suspected he might be watching, though, and Rogers seemed to think the same thing. Thor gave Rogers a smile - at least there would be only one person judging them.

They ate in silence for some time, until Rogers finally spoke. “Look,” he said, “I’m trying to have realistic expectations for this.”

“Yes?” Thor asked.

“But...well,” Rogers said. “Fuck. It’s not going to work.”

“You are certain?” Thor asked. He could not blame the other man for his defeatist attitude. He understood - he had felt the same way, when he had first wandered Alaska, looking for anyone who would drink with him and then fight with him before he had settled on the Wall.

On the other hand - Rogers was likely his only chance at redemption.

“I’m not going to presume to speak for you, OK? But I...I don’t know if I can drift with someone else, after feeling what I did. After...” Rogers shook his head. Thor had listened to the tape, had heard Rogers’ gut wrenching wail after Barnes had been torn from the Conn Pod. He had read the report from the rescuers, who had interviewed two witnesses - Rogers had staggered out, battered and bloodied, muttering Bucky’s name twice before passing out on the beach.

“You were friends since childhood?” Thor asked.

“Yeah,” Rogers said. “Lived next door to each other since we were five. Pretty much mothers. Joined the Army together, before...” He shrugged. “Went to Ranger school together, Bucky was gonna be a sniper and I went to leadership school. Then the kaiju came, and our commander seconded us to SHIELD without even asking.” He laughed. “Said we’d be naturals for the drift, even though everyone was looking for relatives...”

“Yes,” Thor said. Rogers had opened up to him, so he decided to offer him the same. “I was in my mandatory year of service. Loki was...still younger, but it was our father’s idea. And why not? I had always wanted...adventure, something beyond Stockholm and Sweden. Perhaps I failed because my motives were not entirely altruistic.”

“Forgive me, Ranger,” Rogers said, “but I think you failed because your brother was bugfuck crazy.”

Thor was grateful he had food in his mouth so that he did not respond to this statement with his typical fierce anger and protectiveness over Loki, even after everything. “There are two people in the drift, Captain,” he said. “Two people who work as one - and I failed to recognize the peril I put people in, by allowing him to-”

“But what about his agency in all of that?” Rogers asked.

Thor looked at him. “Of course,” he said. “But I did nothing more but ride alongside him. Act as a vector-” It had been like being completely paralyzed, but still aware of everything - through Loki’s eyes, in the drift, and through the information he was fed by Sorcerer’s Bane.

Rogers considered this, and frowned for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose I just meant that you shouldn’t...” He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Thor said. “I appreciate the...many are quick to vilify Loki, and it is deserved. But my role...well.” He paused to eat a piece of chicken. “If I may speak candidly, Captain?” Rogers nodded. “The drift depends on compatibility - the deeper the bond, the better your fight. I believe we have more in common than you may think.”

Loss, Thor thought, loss that cuts deep to the bone - loss the occurred while connected to another that you loved, as a sibling, as a friend, or in whatever way Captain Rogers loved his co-pilot. As Thor had told the many psychologists and psychiatrists he had met with, there was no real way to explain how he felt about the hole that had been drilled out of him to someone who had not drifted with another that they loved.

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Rogers. “I guess we’ll see in the simulator. I suppose I just - it’s not just me in here, you know.”

“Ah,” Thor said. “Yes, I believe I do know.” He had largely banished the remnants of Loki from his consciousness, but there were times when he still felt him lurking on the edge. The psychologists insisted that a ghost drift was not possible across such a distance. Thor had laughed at them. They had obviously not spoken with his brother.

“Besides,” said Rogers, “there are other candidates. It is possible we may each be matched with them - and, in that case, I hope that we still might be friends.” Thor met his eyes, forkful of chicken halfway to his mouth. Rogers nodded. Thor smiled.

“I would like that,” Thor said.


	3. Chapter 3

**Clint**  
“Romanoff and Barton,” Coulson said, and Clint caught the hitch in Coulson’s breath as he said it. _That’s right,_ Clint thought. _I was right._

Clint grinned. He had spent last night reviewing everything they had on Eden Assassin and marveled at how Romanoff, as the lead pilot, had made the Jaeger move and respond. He couldn’t help but fantasize about what she could do in one of the Mark-III - the Mark-IV was a pure brute, it wasn’t made for her. But one of the sleeker Mark-III’s, maybe the one with the retractable hand blades…

He had read over all of her files, too - even the ones SHIELD had tried to bury, the ones that had angry black slashes over large chunks of information. It didn’t matter. Clint could guess what was in there. Things he was familiar with that only a few people knew about - Rhodey, Coulson. He understood Coulson’s reluctance to put him with Romanoff, he was being protective, he thought she would open wounds that had long since scarred over.

Romanoff stood across from him in the standard starting stance. Her eyes were huge and harsh, almost like an anime character, and Clint didn’t want to think about how they might have treated her after Khuliken. After they failed to find her another partner.

She was all huge, harsh eyes, almost like an anime character. She also looked like a caged rabbit, and Clint didn’t want to think about what had happened to her after, how they had treated her when she failed to have another drift compatible partner.

“Begin,” Coulson said.

In the end, Clint wasn’t even sure of the score - a victory, by one point, for Romanoff - because he was overwhelmed by the feel of it. He would never say it out loud, but it was a better connection than the one he had with Rhodey in the kwoon. That fight had brought out all of Clint’s training from when he joined the CIA and, when against Rhodey’s Air Force training, they’d worked great together.

This was different though. This was the circus, this was the trapeze and him shooting arrows from the back of a horse. This was the gymnastics he had learned, the tumbling, this was the grace she had institutionalized in her at some point that he had tried to develop on his own. It was also raw anger tempered with the knowledge that you weren’t going to get anywhere just kicking the shit out of things. Clint certainly had plenty of raw anger, recent and old, and as he and Romanoff moved - danced - around each other, he felt it pouring out of him and her.

It was cathartic, and so, when they were done, he didn’t hesitate to point his staff at her - he knew better than to touch her, “She’s my new co-pilot.”

“She just might be,” Rhodey replied. Coulson just met Clint’s eyes and closed his own. Clint got it - you didn’t want your one remaining mentally stable Jaeger pilot compromised just to test Drift compatibility. He looked over at Romanoff, and she met his eyes for a moment and then looked down. Then he walked over to Coulson.

“Odinsen and Rogers get a date,” he said. “So why don’t we?”

“All right,” Coulson said, and he leaned in, then thought better of saying whatever it was aloud. Something along the lines of, we’ll see how enthused you are about piloting with her after you’ve spoken to her. Clint shrugged his shoulders.

He turned. He hadn’t even spoken to her yet, he realized. “Would you like to get dinner, Ranger Romanoff?” he asked. He spoke slowly but felt bad about it. He never wanted to insult someone for who had English as a second language. After all, what did it mean when someone didn’t speak English well and had an accent? They speak one more language than you probably do. On the other hand, he didn’t want her to not understand. It was one of the hardest things to figure out, especially working for a place like SHIELD.

“Acceptable,” she replied.

“I will come to your room at seven?” Clint said. She nodded her head.

When Clint arrived to pick her up he found her still in her black clothes from the kwoon, but she had put some make-up on. He hadn’t seen her in any since she had arrived. He took this as a good sign.

They didn’t speak until they sat down at the table and she nodded at the basket that had been placed at the center. Apparently even Rangers rations went out the window when you were trying to get potential co-pilots acclimated to each other - looked like they were going to get courses.

“Bread,” she said.

“Yeah,” he replied. “We usually have that.”

“Must be nice,” she said. She ripped the roll apart and buttered it. “We have much to discuss, Barton.”

“I’d like that,” he replied.

“Kharkov said no one wanted me but you.”

He knew he had to be careful here. “I remembered Seattle,” he said. “Would of died without you. So, when I needed someone new, I thought-”

Romanoff cocked her head slowly and at a tight angle. “Yes,” she said. “But I was not with you in the drift.”

“No,” he said. “But I...thought we might have some things in common.” He wondered how she would respond, to him making allusions to what happened to her. To him presuming he had experienced something similar.

What the fuck have I got myself into? Clint thought, but not because she was damaged - she was recalcitrant, and all of that need for privacy was going to butt up against what happened in the Drift.

“You think,” she said, and then nodded at the woman who brought them large bowls of thick soup. Clint dunked his roll in it. “You have read my file.”

“Well, the parts that weren’t blacked out,” Clint replied. Romanoff made a humming sound. “They gave you mine?”

“Yes,” she said. “Very interesting. You run to join the circus. I thought this just fiction.”

Clint considered her for a moment. “Sounds better than ran away from my father before he could beat me to death.” Romanoff held his eyes and then nodded her head.

“Then you work as a hitman,” she said.

“You do what you have to do,” he replied.

“Maybe,” she said, “in another life, without kaiju…we meet each other, like that.” Clint grinned at this.

She gave him a slight, predatory smile. “You will want to fuck after the meal?”

“No,” he said. She pressed her lips together and seemed startled - and Clint felt bad, he had dismissed her so quickly, and things had been going well.

“No?”

Fuck, the make-up, he thought. “Not that you aren’t...uh, attractive, but. I don’t...I’m gay. Mostly. Well, since I figured things out, uh-”

“Are you?” she asked, and she nodded her head. “That will suffice for now, then.”

Suffice? he thought, and he realized that she knew a good deal more English than anyone was giving her credit for. She gave him a slight smile. “You will not tell, will you?” she asked. “It is one thing-”

“If you don’t want me to,” he said, speaking slightly faster. She shook her head and turned as a waiter emerged with pork chops and potatoes.

“That smells amazing,” she said, and gave Clint a slight smile. “Barton.”

“Romanoff.”

“I do not want to go back.” The statement was as plain as anything else that she had said, but Clint got it - and knew the reason she felt she could disclose this to him. He nodded.

“You felt it today,” he said. She looked down, and he didn’t push it. Some people were superstitious like that. He began to cut his pork chop and just smiled at her. She smiled back, indicating that she had. That she had definitely felt it and she agreed with him. There was a Mark-III with their name on it.

“All right,” she replied. “What is the expression? Your funeral.” Clint grinned. He’d been there many times before, and he’d always come out alive.

* * *

**Thor**

“You know,” said Darcy, “usually the jockeys, they like hanging out in the Jaeger Bay. With the techs and the grease and the muscle.”

It was the third time that Thor had appeared in the lab - first, on his tour, second, to sit and chat with Dr. Foster for hours after he returned with her coffee, now, the day after his second kwoon trial with Captain Rogers. They were scheduled for a drift session under Marshal Fury’s attention that afternoon.

Thor was nervous. Rogers had been a pure professional, a soldier, since their meal - strange, given his offer of friendship. Thor presumed he was just as nervous, especially since Rogers had barely left the gym - hitting punching bags, doing sit-ups on an inclined board, doing thigh presses with huge amounts of weight. Thor had gone to one of the paths accessible outside the Shatterdome to run. It was such a shame the beach was wrecked with kaiju blue. It was gorgeous as the sun came up.

“Yes,” he replied. “That was how it was at the Icebox.”

Darcy nodded her head. Thor had been disappointed when he arrived to find Dr. Selvig and Dr. Foster were off at a meeting to teleconference with another scientist in Hong Kong. They had new pictures from the Drift and new calculations to work over. He had found Darcy carefully pinning the new pictures to a corkboard.

Now, though, he was enjoying his conversation with Darcy. Though he hoped Jane would return before his test. Somehow, he felt speaking with her would settle his nerves.

“You want to talk about that?” she asked. She was working on one of the holographic computer screens, organizing Foster’s data - as far as Thor could tell, her job seemed to be primarily converting Dr. Foster’s chalkboard equations to things that could be saved and presented to others in the advanced format they were accustomed to. Especially Stark, who seemed to take real affront to Dr. Foster’s methods. Thor agreed with Jane that he might be using one of his robots to harass her.

“I could,” Thor said. “I have spoken to so many people though - each with something different-”

“Yeah, but they were all professionals,” she said, and manipulated an image and then dragged it to a corner folder. “What about a friend?” Thor shook his head. “Come on, big guy, you can’t tell me you didn’t have a bunch of friends back in Sweden, let alone-”

“I did not wish to speak to them,” Thor said. They had all known him and Loki, and he feared that they would tell him he should have known. And now, he had not even e-mailed to inform his parents that he was in Los Angeles - he did not want to send another e-mail, detailing his rejection and his return to the Wall. Better to wait.

“Well, you can talk to me.”

Something crashed to the ground in the connected lab room. Darcy rolled her eyes - neither of them had gone to see what Stark and Banner was up to. Thor wondered if it was more concerning that they were largely quiet. Usually there was either a steady banter, or they bounced scientific ideas off of each other, or they argued over Dr. Banner’s kaiju samples.

“We are friends?” Thor asked. It seemed a bit soon.

“Why not?” Darcy replied. “Life’s short.” She laughed, at this, and Thor nodded his head. The fact that any day you might die at the hands of a giant trans-dimensional monster did put things into a different perspective.

“It is difficult to explain, as well,” Thor said. “So few people have drifted, let alone been betrayed...drifted with madness…”

“Rogers had a pretty shit experience, though,” Darcy replied. Thor nodded.

“It could be we both inspire each other. But we could chase one R.A.B.I.T. or another-” Thor shuddered. He did not wish to relive any of his experience, let alone inflict it on someone else.

“You’re a trained Jaeger pilot,” Dr. Foster said. Thor turned and blushed, slightly, wondering how long she had been there. Not that he cared that she had overheard - well, perhaps a bit. He did not wish to appear...weak. _Not the best timing,_ he thought to himself. “You know how to deal with that.”

“I appreciate that,” he replied, and he did - no one had really spoken to him in terms of facts, before.

“I heard your kwoon sessions showed high levels of compatibility,” Dr. Foster said.

“It was...exhilarating, and his passion was inspiring-”

“Goodness!” said Dr. Foster, and Darcy rolled her eyes. Thor grinned when he realized that she was just being playful. Flirting.

“Did your meeting go well, Dr. Foster?” Thor asked.

“Really, you can call me Jane,” she replied, and she glanced at Selvig when he appeared in the door. “Well, in the sense that they listened to us - but what we had to say, the data that the information suggests…” she shook her head. “We’re going to need you back in a Jaeger.”

Thor met her eyes, thinking at first it was a throwaway line, even with her earlier indication of confidence in him. Before he could say anything in response there was an explosion from the adjacent labatory room. The walls shook, and Thor instinctively grabbed Darcy, who was closest to him, and tucked her under their table.

“What the hell?” Selvig shouted as a fire alarm and the lab sprinklers went off.

“Is that what I think-” shouted Stark, from the other room. It was followed by a manic giggle.

“You basically built that out of garbage parts-” Bruce said, a little awed.

“They are not-”

“I mean, that piece is literally from Oblivion Bay, Stark, I know-” Banner replied.

“But that’s what I think it is, right - that is what is most important-”

“What. The. Hell.” Selvig repeated. His voice was louder, and it got their attention. Stark poked his head out of the other room. He was covered in grease, soot, and other grime. Darcy raised her eyebrows, presumably at the fact he was wearing a tight fitting tank top and was in quite good shape for an engineer.

“Vibranium,” Stark said. The engineer had a manic smile, and he pointed a screw driver at Thor. “Your Jaeger is getting an arc reactor, buddy.”

“I do not have a-”

“Buddy,” said Stark. “Out of all of the Island of Misfit toys, you and Beddy-Bye are the most stable.” Thor did not reply to this. He was not certain it was a vote of confidence.

* * *

**Steve**

Steve inhaled, and exhaled. He was careful with his breathing techniques and worked on his mindfulness. He hadn’t really had a lot of time to work on the techniques that they had been teaching him - no one thought, really, that he would be released from the facility so soon, let alone called back to pilot.

The test drift room was painted an eggshell white. Same as his hospital room. The seat that he was in was a dark navy blue. The color of the pons machine was grey, almost steel, and it made him think of the packet of Prismacolors that someone had brought him when they woke him up. He shouldn’t have thrown them. He would have liked some pencils, now, the ability to do a rough sketch of Thor next to him and Major Coulson in front of him.

_You should, Steve,_ Bucky said. _You used to love drawing._ Steve sighed. _Please,_ he thought, _please just… I don’t need you, here._ It was hard to think - he had to remind himself that it was just a voice in his head. It wasn’t really Bucky.

Bucky. God, it felt like he had just been here with Bucky - his cocky smile, the way he spread his legs across the chair to indicate that he knew they were going to own this. Steve had sat straighter, a bit taller, and he was a little more nervous. But then Lieutenant Carter had smiled at him, and nodded, and he had relaxed.

“Captain?” said Colonel Rhodes from the control booth where they would be administering the drift technology.

“I am ready,” he said. He glanced over at Thor. He had thought about giving him a talk, before hand, telling him what it was he was going to find - but what was the point? Thor was determined, and he would see it anyway.

“Lieutenant?”

“Yes,” said Thor. He was facing straight ahead but his eyes were closed. He had flinched when they put the pons on him but now had a steady, almost blank look on his face.

“I’m going to initiate the drift process,” said the technician. Steve felt bad - he should have known the man’s name. “Prepare for neural handshake in 10, 9, 8...” Steve closed his eyes. He felt nauseous, for a moment, remembering all the times he had done this with Bucky and how easy it had been. He had never drifted with anyone else, there hadn’t been a need to test him with anyone else-

And there it was, the massive rush of memories and experiences. It was overwhelming and Steve tried to grab onto something that he could sync in with, anything besides pain and agony and hurt and regret and it was cold, _Bucky is gone and I feel so fucking cold and-_

_Snow. North of Sweden, for Christmas, actual reindeer-_

_Some Santa that visited them in foster care when they were in that house with fourteen of them - his mother’s death- visited us, visited us-_

_His father’s disapproval-_

_Never even knew him- abandoned us-_

_They were grasping at straws, Steve could feel it. “We don’t have a stable connection, sir,” he heard Colonel Rhodes say. “There hasn’t even been the initiation - the drift is-”_

_Steve thought about the Jaegers that were just sitting in that bay and the monsters that were attacking and killing people. He could feel Thor thinking the same._

_Steve remembered his commitment, when he had signed on - _the world was ending,_ he thought, now, _where would he rather be? Back in some Army hospital to get studied, to see how he had managed to pilot Commando solo? Or actually in another Jaeger?__

_Steve opened himself. He thought about Bucky’s arm around his shoulder when they had passed their real life simulation in the practice Jaeger, one of the old Horizon Braves, up on Kodiak Island. _You boys will be getting the latest in Mark-III technology._ They named her Howling Commando for the Army Unit from World War II that they had learned about in their Ranger training. The logo was a forties style showgirl in Americana garb being carried, wedding threshold style, by a soldier. _Well, easy enough to tell who’s who,_ Bucky said, and elbowed him. Bucky had been the one to start stamping their kill count on everything - like those fighter pilots did, from WWII. Soon everyone was, and they saw a picture of the Becket’s bathroom door with Gipsy’s count on it. _

_They were called to go out against Red Skull and Bucky had just grinned at him, _ready for another notch on the belt, Captain?_ Steve was still only half awake because it was two or three in the morning but Bucky was bouncing around like a puppy-_

__I can feel him, Captain, it is all right-_ Thor said to him. _

__I saw it coming, I could feel it, that thing getting close and tearing straight into the Conn Pod and pulling him out and he said, Steve, listen to me but he was never able to finish and he was scared and so scared and didn’t want to die and terrified and the pain was deep and shot through Steve’s spine and radiated out through his body and being dead was-_ _

__He was pushed aside and cast off but kept because Loki needed him, still, he couldn’t pilot alone, and it was like watching through someone else’s eyes as rage consumed both of them and it was hard and it burned and Loki just wanted to destroy everything, because he had never-_ _

__Oh God Oh God he’s gone and that thing is still there and-_ _

__They were heading for the city, for all of those people, and why, brother? Why-_ _

__“And there’s the neural handshake,” said Captain Rhodes. “Holding at 95%. Very nice, gentlemen.”_ _

__Steve exhaled. There it was - the characteristic emptiness that was symbiotic with the sense of togetherness, and somehow, the hurt and pain was gone but also still there, carrying them. They were one and also two. Steve opened his eyes._ _

__“How does that feel, gentlemen?” Coulson asked._ _

__“Stable,” said Steve._ _

__“Good,” said Thor._ _

__They glanced at each other, more out of habit than anything - not used to being in each other’s head, yet. Steve smiled, slightly, and Thor did as well. It was almost like their anguish and hurt had cancelled the other’s out._ _

__“Good,” said Coulson. “Would you be ready if we started the dual simulation, then?” He looked over at the visors on a table near him._ _

__“Yes,” Steve said._ _

__They quickly understood each other and developed an easy shorthand - _left...duck...punch...step aside...draw it out...punch...grab! Wrench it! Pull...now surge forward...punch, again! The head…wrech it, now, pull...there!_ _ _

__“Haven’t seen a kill that fast in some time,” Colonel Rhodes said, after they had disengaged from the handshake and closed out the simulation. “That was a Category-IV, too.”_ _

__“Well, congratulations, then, gentlemen,” said Coulson. “Looks like you’ll be doing test runs in a Jaeger tomorrow.”_ _

__“We’ll give you a moment,” said Colonel Rhodes, as was customary._ _

__Steve instantly felt sick - he had after his first drift with Bucky. _Always with the performance anxiety,_ Bucky said, _and you’re always amongst the best._ It was said with affection. _ _

__Thor immediately grabbed a garbage can and had it underneath him right before he actually vomited. “Thanks,” he said._ _

__“I will get you some water,” Thor said. He knelt beside Steve, he was close to him. He put a hand on his back and Steve shuddered. He hadn’t been touched in so long, like that. Thor nodded at him, got up, and handed him some water. He knelt back down alongside Steve. “Captain, may I-”_ _

__“Yeah,” Steve said. “I mean, obviously, we’re gonna have to get used that to - I told you, wasn’t just me.”_ _

__“No,” said Thor. “I thought that it might be...it is similar to what I felt, in the beginning.”_ _

__“It went away?” Steve asked. He still wasn’t sure if he wanted him to - _just a voice,_ he reminded himself. But there was a nagging little part of him, despite what the psychologists and psychiatrists and neuroscientists and neurobiologists said, that wondered if there really was a part of Bucky inside of him. It had been different than what happened with Thor. Bucky had died._ _

__“I will him away,” Thor said. He paused, for a moment. He put a hand on Steve’s knee and smiled at him. “The others - they all died in the Tantalus attack?”_ _

__Steve sighed. The last thing he remembered hearing was Peggy from LOCCENT. “We’re getting life signs from the kaiju, Commando! Activity to your left - it’s not yet-” Then everything hurt, his entire body burned, and Bucky was gone. Peggy was gone too, his connection lost, but he knew he had to finish it._ _

__“Yeah,” he said. “No one told me until I was awake for four days. Thought it would upset me.”_ _

__Thor nodded. “While you wondered why your friends had not been to see you.”_ _

__“Fuck, they tried to pretend like it still was - like it had been a week, or something,” Steve shook his head. “Played some baseball game...and I knew it was wrong, I had already listened to that game.” He shook his head._ _

__“SHIELD does appear to employ competent psychologists,” Thor said. Steve sort of laughed at this, but it was more of a choking sound. He took a sip of his water and Thor rubbed his back. Their eyes met, for a moment, and Steve desperately wanted to talk about something else._ _

__“Dr. Foster, huh?” he asked, and Thor looked away. “She’s really cute.”_ _

__“Yes,” Thor said. “She is.”_ _

__“You gonna..?”_ _

__“I am not sure that she reciprocates my feelings,” Thor said. “Besides, we have only known one another for a few days.”_ _

__“Time works differently, now,” Steve said. Half a year felt like sixty years._ _

__“Yes,” Thor said. “Life is short.”_ _

 

* * *

__**Bruce** _ _

__“Do we really need to watch this?” Bruce asked. He never quite knew how to feel around the Jaegers - they reminded him of Betty, of Ross. Betty used to drag him to see the early trials as she developed the pons system and the neural spine for the Jaeger pilots. They had actually been out to L.A., several times to watch the trials after Brawler Yukon had taken down Karloff._ _

__And then there had been Ross, hovering over him with that goddamn cigar in his mouth. “Kaiju groupie,” he snarled. “Can’t believe I’ve got to sit here and oversee this damn biological resource instead of being where the real action is…” As if he would ever move to the Pacific while Betty was on the East Coast in the Harvard lab, shifting into looking into kaiju neuroscience now that the Jaeger system was larglely functional._ _

__“Yes, we really need to watch this,” Tony said. “If anything goes wrong with that reactor, we’re sort of the only ones who know-”_ _

__“What do you mean, goes wrong with the reactor?” Colonel Rhodes asked. The smell of his uniform was familiar. Bruce inched away from him to the other side of Tony, closer to Ms. Potts. She held a clipboard to her chest and nodded at him._ _

__“Well…” Tony said. “It’s still, a bit…look! Would I have put it into my baby if I thought..?”_ _

__“Yes,” said Colonel Rhodes and Pepper together. Bruce smiled._ _

__“This is one of the Mark-III’s, though, right?”_ _

__“Yeah,” said Tony. “Couple of nifty little things - the one hand can morph into sort of hammer, for bashing, but it’s got a plasma function so it sears the kaiju skin shut after you beat the shit out of it with the hammer-”_ _

__“The hammer is my penis,” Bruce said. Pepper snorted, but Tony appeared confused. Pepper gave him a slight smile._ _

__All of the other pilots were present. Bruce knew what was going on with them only because Tony had been insistent that Bruce sit with him at all meals, which meant sitting with Rhodes and Barton. Not that there was anything else that people were talking about._ _

__The whole Shatterdome was waiting to see if Fury was going to authorize Barton to actually drift with Romanoff - especially Morgenstern and Chau. Morgenstern had apparently picked a fight with Barton in the kwoon and called him Coulson’s bitch. Barton had laid her out for it and refused to even consider drifting with her._ _

__Bruce watched their reactions as Odinsen and Rogers ran the Mark-III through the standard drills. They assumed an initial fighting stance, they pressed the hands together, they coordinated various movements with hands and legs. They pulled out the hammer and the plasma charge was brought up without any incident - and only then did the other pilots appear to be mildly impressed._ _

__“One down,” Tony said, when they were done. “Though those two headcases are not getting my baby-”_ _

__“Why would we put them in the Mark-III when we’ve got-”_ _

__“Why would you have them practice in the Mark-III-”_ _

__“So, if things went poorly, they didn’t damage the Mark-IV,” said Coulson, appearing behind them. Bruce startled. “Apologies, Dr. Banner.”_ _

__Tony had nothing to worry about, though. The two pilots said that they wanted to remain in the Mark-III - Rogers thought it was felicitous that the Jaeger had a hammer and a pilot named Thor. “We should all be embarrassed that Captain America was the first one to make that connection, by the way,” Tony said at dinner._ _

__“Captain America?” Barton asked._ _

__“Look at him,” Tony said, and waved his hand at Rogers, who was dining with Thor and the astro-physicists. Since the explosion they had decided to ignore Tony and Bruce. Tony said this was fine, he didn’t care, but Bruce suspected he was going to do something really juvenile like steal all of Jane Foster’s chalk in the dead of night. “Blonde hair, blue eyes, jaw of a Kennedy, have you seen that ass? If he’s not the embodiment of-”_ _

__“Isn’t that more the Third Reich ideal?” Barton asked. Tony narrowed his eyes at him._ _

__“OK, fine, whatever, I’m just saying, we should all be embarrassed that he got that one first...I mean, even Thor-”_ _

__“Being Swedish, he should immediately make that connection,,” said Barton. Bruce had to smile with how each word managed to drip with sarcasm._ _

__“Wait, he’s from Sweden? What’s with the slight English accent, then?” Tony asked._ _

__“They learn proper English,” Barton said. “The King’s.”_ _

__“It’s the Queen’s, now,” Bruce said._ _

__“They change it with the monarch? Huh.”_ _

__“Since when did you learn all this, you go on a date with him?” Tony asked Barton._ _

__“I had a Danish boyfriend for a bit,” Barton replied, and narrowed his eyes. Bruce sighed._ _

__“Have they named it yet?” Bruce asked, before the two of them started throwing food at one another._ _

__“Valkyrie Thunder,” said Barton. “It’s good, but-”_ _

__“Why, you got ideas for the other Mark-III?” Tony asked._ _

__“More like the Mark-IV,” said Clint. Tony shook his head. “I thought she was made for me-”_ _

__“You and him,” Tony said. “Not you and some crazy-”_ _

__“She’s not crazy,” Barton said. There was ice in his tone, and everyone at the table looked between him and Tony._ _

__Tony held both his hands up and nodded slowly, then glanced at Bruce. He wasn’t going to add anything. He had spent the day vivisecting a kaiju gland before he’d been pulled out of it - literally - to attend the test trials. “Fine,” Tony said. His lip twitched slightly, though, and then he shouted when Barton kicked him under the table._ _

__Bruce sighed. Not that he wanted to go back to his little container - but he missed the peace and quiet, sometimes._ _


	4. Chapter 4

**Clint**

  
“I want to try it,” Clint said to Natasha. Her gaze was harsh and steady.

Clint was close to getting them to allow him to drift with Natasha. They’d run the non-pons simulations and got absurdly high scores without a drift. Their kwoon matches were getting more seamless. And, unlike the unfortunate Russian they’d tried to stick her with, Clint was actually able to talk with Natasha.

And she trusted that he wouldn’t take advantage of her. “You do not,” she said.

“I think you’re just as fucked up as the rest of us,” said Clint. “And I think, if you want to let me in, that you’re not going to-”

“It is not about trust,” she said. “They cut me apart. Put me back together how they wanted. There are things I cannot control.”

“You think you’re the only one?”

“I know I am not,” Natasha replied. Her tone was biting.

“No, I mean - outside of your program, whatever-”

“They called it the Red Room,” she said.

“Yeah, well, it happens to other people too - who’ve experienced things, that they don’t necessarily-” Clint stopped and felt his throat tighten as he remembered his father looming over him with his hand poised to strike him. The time that he had cracked Clint’s head into the kitchen counter and he had to get sixteen stitches, get his head shaved so that everyone could see-

“I am sorry,” Natasha said. She had moved closer to him and put her hand on his. Clint met her eyes and she held his gaze. “You are probably right.”

“And - you know, even if I was…” Clint said, because he didn’t want to talk about it - she would know, soon enough, he knew he had convinced her, “I would never be with someone I drifted with. That kind of intimacy-” He wanted to reassure her, since this seemed to be a big fear for her.

“Why not fuck when you have seen all of it?” Natasha asked. “You have not..?” Clint shook his head.

“That relationship, knowing all of that, you just can’t…” he shook his head. He knew he was in the minority on this - plenty of unrelated pilot pairs had wound up sleeping together, and there was certainly plenty of speculation about the related ones. “In a relationship, I want there to be discovery, you know. Getting the other person to open up-”

Natasha kissed him on the cheek. She looked surprised when she pulled away but Clint smiled at her. “We will do the simulation,” she said. “Your brain is the one that will be applesauce.”

“I know what it’s like to be taken apart,” he said. “No one did it to...train me to be anything, but…it will work, I can feel it.” She nodded. She glanced out of the corner of her eye, then, and Clint followed her gaze. Coulson had appeared in the doorway on the commissary. Or perhaps he had been there for some time, pretending not to watch them. Then he stepped back and moved down the hall.

“Why have you not..?” she asked. “I see you with him.” She had probably been watching as he and Coulson had stood and joked in the kwoon before his session with Natasha, or how Clint and Coulson had been whispering together the whole time that Thor and Steve were doing their Jaeger trial.

“It’s complicated,” Clint said.

“More complicated than…” she waved her hand between the two of them.

“He’s...he picked me for the program, and I was like you - they all thought I was too fucked up, no one would drift with me. Coulson trained me. He kept putting me forward. Matched me with Rhodes. I never would have-”

“So?” she asked. “World is ending, Barton. Kaiju comes - we die fighting. Or you drown in kaiju blue, kaiju shit. You want last thought to be..?”

“He called me kid,” Clint said, and winced, slightly. It wasn’t the best argument. Especially compared to Natasha’s.

“They get smarter. Dr. Foster says.” Clint opened his mouth to say something and then remembered that her last partner had been injured in the Conn Pod and died days later. “I only Drift with you if you try,” she said.

“Are you serious?” Clint asked. He had thought- “You can’t just-”

“Can,” she said. “I don’t drift with cowards.” Her jaw was set firm, and she ran her hands through the bright red hair of hers.

“OK,” he said. He held out his hand, and Natasha shook it.

* * *

**Thor**

“I should congratulate you-” Dr. Foster said, when Thor walked into the lab under the pretenses of looking for Stark to ask him a question about the hammer’s plasma array.

“Dude, couldn’t of thought of a better name,” Darcy said. “Valkyrie Thunder is so badass.”

“I like it,” Dr. Foster said. She pushed some hair out of her face and gave him a nervous, slight smile. “It works for the two of you…”

“Thank you,” said Thor. “I was actually hoping to ask Stark about the, uh, hammer capabilities of…” he trailed off because Dr. Foster’s face fell, slightly. Darcy met his eyes and then darted out of the room, mumbling something about having to find Selvig. Thor swallowed. “Actually, that was pretense.”

Dr. Foster looked up. Her eyes met Thor’s for a moment and then darted over to one of her chalkboards. “It was?”

“I enjoy speaking with you,” Thor said. “We have not known each other long, but I feel - well. I thought we might have...a date.” He was not familiar with Los Angeles, but he was sure if he asked Ms. Potts she would be able to arrange something for them.

“A date?” Dr. Foster asked, and then she made a slight giggling sound. “Gosh, I haven’t been asked on a date in-”

“Then all of those others were quite foolish,” Thor said, and smiled softly at her. “I have been given leave for the day, after our success. There is no one else I would like better than to celebrate with.”

“Goodness,” said Dr. Foster. “I mean, of course. Yes. Would six work? I need to get some calculations to Dr. Gottlieb.”

“Of course,” said Thor. He paused, for a moment. “I should probably actually ask Stark my question.”

“Ah, yes,” said Dr. Foster. “He and Dr. Banner are working on getting the arc reactor core into the Mark-IV.” Thor nodded at her.

Ms. Potts handled everything for him. She gave him a broad smile when he stated his purpose. “Somewhere casual, but nice,” he said. “Quiet.”

“I know just the place,” she said. “I’ll get you a driver, as well.”

“I am capable of using one of the Shatterdome’s vehicles-”

“You don’t want to be driving in L.A. traffic for the first time on a date, Lt. Odinsen,” she said. He nodded.

“Ooh,” Dr. Foster - Jane, now, he supposed - said when the driver held the door for her. “Fancy.” Thor nodded. He had kissed her cheek when she met him at the garage. She looked gorgeous in a simple black dress and red ballet flats. Darcy had attempted to get her to wear heels, she said, but she had nearly fallen over. Thor had smiled.

Thor sat next to her and took her hand. She squeezed. “I’ve usually maintained a strict, uh, no pilots policy,” she said. “I wanted to tell you that, to start.”

“I see,” Thor said.

“You get an exception, I mean - obviously, but...I’ve just, I’ve seen people, you know…”

“Yes,” Thor said. He had seen it as well.

“But I guess, sometimes, it’s worth the risk - and fuck, one of my colleagues is probably calculating it right now. Physicists. Mathematicians. All of them. Anyway, I...well. Where are we going?”

“Ms. Potts recommended a Lebanese place - she said they do a very nice meze.”

“Oh, that sounds amazing,” said Jane.

It was - Thor ordered, more familiar with the cuisine. He was pleased that there was a wide array of white wines to choose from, since they better matched the flavors of what he ordered. Jane ate more than he thought someone her size would. He liked watching her enjoy her food. “You seem familiar with this - did you have a lot of Lebanese..?”

“In Sweden?” Thor asked. “Yes.”

“You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to,” Jane said.

“No,” Thor said. “I should, I...with Captain Rogers, it was how we managed to drift together. So perhaps it is...there was a restaurant near our house. We would often get takeaway since my mother and father were quite busy.”

“What do they do?” She took a large swig from her wine. Thor grinned.

“Mother is a doctor. Father was a CEO, but has since retired. Cashed in his stock options.”

“Wait,” said Jane. She narrowed her eyes. “Are you rich?” Thor turned his head, slightly, at this - it was almost more embarrassing to admit to this than to talk about more painful things.

“Yes,” said Thor. “But...it has been a long while since I have…” Jane smiled at him.

“It’s OK,” Jane said. “My dad was a high school science teacher - I know, right? - and my mum was a nurse...so, you know, no surprise I turned out the way I did, and it was all middle class America and poodles and stuff. What’s Sweden like?”

Thor relaxed and the conversation was easy after that - he told her his favorite things about Stockholm and the many canals, and the vacation home they had in the north of Sweden. His father, for some reason, had thought it would be good for their constitution. The Foster’s had a lake house, an hour from their house, and Jane told him about how the other children had often made fun of her for reading as much as she did.

“There is nothing wrong with that,” Thor said.

Jane shrugged her shoulders. “I was voracious, though, you know, I’d read whatever I could get my hands on, I-” Thor grinned at her - it was the use of the word voracious, and he knew it was immature. But as soon as she said it he imagined her in his bed, how he would seek to quell that appetite-

“Goodness,” she said, and blushed. She put her ankle next to his and ate a stuffed grape leaf. The rice fell out a bit and onto her chin. “Goddamnit,” she said. “There goes that sexy moment.”

“Here,” Thor said. He took a napkin and wiped the rice away. They were close enough, but he did not kiss her. He merely met her eyes.

“Fuck,” said Jane. Thor grinned.

On the way home they sat and their thighs touched in the car. Jane giggled at this and then knit her fingers into Thor’s. He walked her back to her small room. “May I?” he asked.

“Seriously, you’re going to kiss me goodnight?” she asked. “And that’s it?”

“Yes,” Thor said. Jane grinned at him. Thor had to lean down significantly and Jane got up on her tiptoes. He kissed her, light at first and then more firm - but Jane was the one to open his mouth and put her tongue in. He placed a hand on her jaw and pulled away. It was reluctant, certainly, but Thor thought it was the right thing to do. “Goodnight, Jane.”

“Goodnight,” she said, and he could hear her laugh as she closed the door behind her.

* * *

**Clint**

“Sir.” He smiled at Coulson, glad that he was in his office doing paperwork. Clint lingered, for a moment, and wondered if this really was a good idea. After all, Natasha had made it a precondition for them drifting - not that he didn’t want to. He’d wanted to for some time, but there were all sorts of command issues, not to mention...and he was finally going to do it so he could get in a Jaeger with a woman everyone was sure was going to liquefy his brain.

Well. People probably got nudges from all different directions.

Coulson finally looked up. “Ranger Barton,” he said. “Something I can do for you?”

Clint swallowed. Fuck. He punched out two thousand ton monsters from another dimension. “Thought maybe you might like to get something to drink - coffee, or..?” In another life, it would be easier - invite the man out for a drink at the bar down the street from their office, casually put your foot next to his foot, a few touches to the arm just to make sure… but everything was different in the Shatterdome. World was ending, plenty of people got together for whatever reason. Part of the fun was watching the rearrangements that happened in the cafeteria and chronicling who had broken up and who had got together. But Clint didn’t want something like that with Coulson, he wanted something with a lot more permanence.

Coulson leaned back and studied him - it was the same look he had given Clint when he had turned up in Coulson’s office after applyng for the program. Clint remembered the way that he had looked at the resume on the computer screen and a smile had twitched on his face for just a moment. _World’s Greatest Marksmen?_ he asked, and Clint had known they were going to do just fine. “Is this a date, Ranger Barton?” In almost the exact same tone.

Clint felt his stomach drop. “You should probably call me Clint,” he said. Coulson nodded - so yes? - grabbed his suit jacket, and stood.

“Phil,” he said.

“Really?” Clint asked - how many years, and he’d never known. Major Coulson was Major Coulson or one of those two. Coulson - Phil - nodded. Clint decided to try it out. “Phil.”

“Let me book a car,” he said. “I know you have the evening off.” Clint nodded at this and refrained from grinning ear to ear as Phil made arrangements on his phone. “Do you mind if I ask what spurned this?”

Clint was glad he was still behind Phil so he could grimace - might as well tell the truth, he thought. “I’ve wanted to for some time, sir - Phil. Just...Natasha - Ranger Romanoff - suggested I should. Well, said she wouldn’t agree to drift with me unless I did.” Clint was at Phil’s side by the time he finished, and he realized that this was exactly what he had wanted to hear - and it had nothing to do with Clint and everything to do with Natasha.  
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “I-”

“You can admit I was right,” Clint said. He grinned, and Phil shook his head slightly.

“We can leave the shop talk here,” Phil said, and then nodded his head towards the elevator. Clint pressed his lips together, but then wondered - what else did they have to talk about?

It turned out they had plenty. Despite their age difference, they appreciated the same type of music, shared a love of camping - Clint, out west, while Coulson’s experience was primary in the East and South - and incredibly similar taste in pre-Breach television.

Dinner passed easily, and for a moment, Clint could imagine that they were a normal couple. They spun their noodles together in chopsticks and laughed. As Coulson took the check, the waitress bowed her head slightly. “I hope you do not mind, Ranger, but a picture?”

“Oh, sure,” Clint said. He didn’t really feel like a Ranger, now that he didn’t have Rhodey - wasn’t like he could get in a Jaeger and defend Los Angeles right now. He smiled as the waitress held up her cell phone, then glanced over at Phil - should he have posed with him?

“I’m fine being behind the scenes,” Phil said. Clint nodded, but somehow he felt that this wasn’t the full truth.

When they took the elevator up from the car garage Clint leaned in and kissed Coulson. He pressed his lips in hard and tugged a little bit on the SHIELD issued button down shirt to pull him in closer. Coulson allowed it and seemed to fit perfectly into his. Clint sighed as they maintained their kiss the entire ride up, neither really disentangling even as they stepped off. “Yours, or mine?” Clint asked. Coulson blinked at him. “I’m sorry, is that too...presumptuous? Too soon?”

“No,” Phil said, finally, and after that kiss Clint could finally get around to thinking of him as Phil. “I just find it...well.” He smiled. “Mine,” he said. “I’ve got an attached shower.”

“Agreed,” Clint replied. He narrowed his eyes at one of the engineers they met in the hallway. He nodded back at Clint. This meant he’d at least have the common sense not to tell anyone that evening, saving them from some drunk asshole - who were they kidding, it would be Stark - pounding on their door and congratulating them. Money could wait to exchange hands until tomorrow.

Clint wanted to tear Phil’s clothes off and to savor the process. Phil seemed to be erring towards the later, so Clint stroked down his sides and carefully slid him out of his jacket once they made it into the apartment and then his tie. He shucked his own shirt off and saw Phil’’s eyes widen. Clint smiled.

“You look good,” Coulson said, voice a little lower than normal. He shook his head.

“Phil…” Clint said. He kissed him again, not sure where Phil’s reluctance came from. He unbuttoned Phil’s shirt and let it hang at Phil’s side and put his thumbs under the waistband of Phil’s pants.

Phil removed his undershirt and Clint did his best to minimize his reaction. “That why you never jockeyed?” he asked. There had been so many rumors, so much speculation. Phil’s recalcitrance over just about everything made sense - Clint had always suspected it was more than just the military bearing.

Phil sighed. “I was in the training program when Karloff hit,” he said. “We were trying to minimize civilian casualties - I caught a piece of steel girder when one of the buildings collapsed-” he turned so that Clint could see the exit wound in his back - it was even bigger than the scar that ran from his collarbone down to end of his ribcage and it was more raw and ragged. “I was dead for three minutes, but was fortunate to be submerged in some cold ass water, so-” he inhaled when Clint leaned forward and kissed the top of the scar, near his collarbone. He reached back and ran his fingers reverently down the jagged scar in the back. “Collapsed lung...had one of the veins to the heart put back together…”

“You’re a miracle,” Clint said, and looked up, and he felt for short moment like he had said something stupid. Phil looked at him with great interest.

“I suppose so,” he replied, and whatever it was, Clint’s statement seemed to take all of the reluctance out of Phil. He moved forward and pulled Clint back onto his bed by the zipper placket of his pants. Clint groaned.

They were out of their pants in short order, and Clint palmed at Phil’s cock and squeezed it as he slid from his lips to his neck. “Clint, I...I like to, uh, negotiate things - I mean, it’s not the best, once you get in the heat of-”

“Ah,” Clint said, just after he slid his lips down Phil’s collarbone. “I don’t...I’m very, uh, open. Versatile.” Phil grinned slightly at this. “You too. Right,” Clint said. “Rock paper scissors?”

“Ha,” Phil said, and then leaned and sucked at Clint’s ear lobe. “I’ve been…” he moved his hips up, so that his cock rubbed against Clint’s thigh, and Clint groaned, “thinking, for some time, about your cock inside me.”

“Christ,” Clint said. “As long as you plan on reciprocating-”

“Oh, I intend to,” Phil said. He ground his cock into Clint’s thigh again. Clint leaned forward and kissed his lips.

* * *

**Steve**

They were ready to do their second test drift in Valkyrie Thunder - their first with her having a name. Steve stepped into the right side of the Jaeger, the dominant side. He’d been initially concerned when he found Thor had jockeyed on the right, as well, but he’d yielded with no complaints. Steve remembered the drivesuit burns he saw as they were getting outfitted and wondered how much damage there still was under the surface. After all, Thor had completely fled after he was discharged from the hospital, it wasn’t likely he had done physical therapy.

Not like Steve had, either, and his were worse. And he certainly knew what they felt like.

Thor caught him looking and he had a sympathetic smile even though Steve turned away - it wasn’t a dick measuring context. “Steve.”

“Well, we’re a pair, eh?” Steve asked. Thor nodded.

Steve wondered how someone who had been through what he had - who had melded his brain with someone like Loki Odinsen - could still be so good. So simple. Not that Thor was stupid, but he just wore his heart on his sleeve, sort of like a big golden retriever.

“Valkyrie Thunder, second drift test,” came into their helmets and this time Hill appeared to be the one running LOCCENT. “Captain, Lieutenant, ready?”

“Valkyrie Thunder ready for drift,” Steve said. _There you go, buddy, wasn’t so bad?_ Bucky asked. I miss him, Steve thought. Howling Commando had been beautiful - not that Stark’s work wasn’t, but he had looked every part the Army Ranger they had named him after. Valkyrie Thunder was different, she had a natural grace to her that had partially inspired the name.

_She is a warrior,_ Thor said. Not only that, but the valkyrie’s carried the worthy dead who had perished in battle to Odin’s Halls - and, well, Bucky would be there, ordering beer and smacking maiden’s asses. And he and Thor had both come pretty damn close to clanking tankards next to hin.

They entered the drift with a start - pain, anguish, hurt, but this time they ricocheted the feelings off one another instead of the particular memories. They were already developing a dialogue, and Steve almost gasped and how easy it was. Something softer snuck through, then - hope. Steve thought it might be his, and then knew when it was echoed with Thor’s own. He relaxed. He could do this-

_soft lips, her body so small against his own, she might be 5-2-_

_a date? I had a date-_

“You need to stabilize, Captain, you’re wavering,” Hill said. Steve pulled himself back from the images of Thor and Jane on their date, towards images of playing football - well, Thor had played soccer, Steve had played football. “There we are,” said Hill.

“I am-” Thor began.

“No, it’s fine,” Steve said. “I’m happy for you.” Thor nodded.

“Let’s begin, gentlemen,” Agent Coulson said.

After, as they took their drive suits off, Thor turned to him. “I know you probably do not wish to speak to me about this...but I know someone who is a very good listener. If you do not mind, uh, the smell of kaiju.”

Steve furrowed his brow. _Just bottle it up, Steve, that’s always worked in the past,_ Bucky said. Steve closed his eyes. Bucky became more prevalent, seemed to get more aggressive when Steve was upset. Just a voice, he thought, because the real Bucky - he never would have goaded Steve like that. He would have been the one to listen. “Sure,” Steve said.

He knew they were headed for the science lab, but part of him thought that Thor would be directing him to Dr. Banner. He seemed to be the sort who was legitimately good at listening. Instead, Thor introduced him to a young, dark haired girl with large glasses who had chalk smudged all over her clothes. “What do you do here, exactly?” Steve asked, as Thor directed him to a stool and went to make Steve some hot chocolate.

“I’m Dr. Foster and Dr. Selvig’s assistant,” she said, and pushed her glasses up. “So, you know, genius wrangler.”

“I’m not exactly a genius,” Steve said.

“Are you kidding?” asked Darcy. “What did someone once say, piloting a Jaeger is like trying to ride an elliptical while solving a rubix cube and...something else, or maybe I’m mixing it up, but it takes more than just muscle, that’s for sure.” Steve had never thought of it that way - they had made it seem, at the Academy, that muscle was what they were looking for. It certainly took serious strength to maneuver in the Conn Pod. He supposed it made sense to discriminate that way, though, no point in pulling out everyone who was drift compatible if they couldn’t physically manage the task.

“Well,” Steve said, and took his hot chocolate from Thor, who stepped out once delivery was complete. Steve understood. It did reek of kaiju. “You ever get used to that smell?”

“Kind of,” she said. “I mean, Dr. Banner is a lot better about his specimens than Dr. Geiszler was, oh man, he would just get out the electric turkey saw or chainsaw, depending, and...sorry.”

“No, it’s OK,” Steve said.

“So, what’s up, Captain?” The way she said Captain was sort of lascivious. Steve blinked at her.

“Uh, well. Thor and I...we’ve got a lot, on our shoulders, you know, we’re the only ones, right now, and if there is a kaiju coming...and I nearly broke the drift, today, because of Thor’s date with Dr. Foster.”

“Ah,” said Darcy, and she pulled a file up on the 3-D hologram screen and began to manipulate it. “So what happened?” She grinned at Steve as he understood what she meant. “Yeah, genius wrangler - because I’m, like, not a genius, but I’m good with people. Know when they need their damn coffee or to flit around and ramble about the massive blonde dude they’re crushing on. Your lady..?”

“Passed on,” said Steve. “When I was in the coma, we were...well, she wasn’t. We had just sort of gotten around to deciding that we should go on a date. Actually, over the comm-line while I was headed out…”

“Oh god,” Darcy said. “That’s just…”

“I woke up, and I thought...I had a date, and…” he shook his head. “We kissed, at least. But.”

“No, it totally doesn’t - I mean, yeah, cherish what you had, yada yada, but…” Darcy shook her head. “That fucking sucks, Captain.” She moved her 3-D image around and added an element to it. “Not much I can really say. I mean, fuck, how are you here?”

Steve met her eyes and thought...it should be an easy question to answer. And it had been, at the start. Would you like to stay here, Captain, in the same psych ward we’ve got Loki Odinsen locked away somewhere in a - hopefully - Hannibal Lecter mask? Or would you like to head to Los Angeles and try and pilot a Jaeger again? But now… “Because I have to do this. These kaiju, whatever is sending them, they thought we would just roll over and die. That we would be easy to take down. But we fought back. And I - I don’t like bullies.”

Darcy smiled at him and he took a sip of his hot chocolate. “Cool,” she said. Steve smiled at her, slightly, and felt a little bit embarrassed - did anyone talk like that, anymore? “Here, this is something you can help me with, if you don’t mind..?”

“No, not at all,” said Steve, as Darcy slid a paper file towards him.

* * *

**Clint**

Clint splayed out on the floor and took a breath in, and a breath out. PHil was hovering, he could feel him, but it wasn’t his moment, right now. “Barton,” said Rhodey, instead.

“M’good,” he replied. He realized they probably thought he’d gone the way of Natasha’s past drift partner, given the stupid ass grin on his face. “More than good. Romanoff?” He’d sort of done this his first time with Rhodey, as well. At least he hadn’t thrown up.

“I am. Yes,” she said. She was still seated in her chair but she glanced down at Clint and nodded at him. She was just as broken as she thought she was. She was just as broken as Clint. As some other people, too.

“That was an incredibly strong neural handshake,” said Coulson. “Quick, efficient-”

“Doesn’t mean they get the Mark-IV!” came a voice, from somewhere high above Clint. He had to open his eyes in order to roll them. “They haven’t shown that they’re worthy of my baby!”

“You would think it came out of his cunt,” said Romanoff. There was silence in the room, for a moment - and she looked every bit the wounded animal that she had looked when she first came in. Until Clint laughed along with Rhodey, and then even Coulson chuckled when he realized that she had made a joke.

“I heard that!” Stark called. “Now you are definitely never touching-” He was pulled away from the microphone, then, thank god.

Rhodey bent down and looked at Clint. Romanoff nodded at Rhodey and moved to go and get some water from the other side of the room. “Seriously, though-”

“We’re good, man, we are more than good,” he said. It hadn’t been like he and Rhodey at all, an exchange of ideas and pictures and feelings that they had knit together into a connection. With Natasha it had been like watching a movie, a whole life, but in the space of a few seconds and then reflecting it back - Yes, I know, I know, I know… He didn’t want to say it to Rhodey - would never admit it to him - but Natasha was the partner he had been meant to have.

“Good,” Rhodey said, though Clint could tell all was not well with Rhodey. No cancer, yet, but he basically rated as glowstick. And no one needed to tell him what happened to most of the other Mark-I pilots. There were a lot of graves in the memorial cemetery in England that had no bodies because they couldn’t find them - but there were several more that did have bodies.

“Uh, I’ll let you two…” He gave Clint a grin, then, which meant that the engineer they had run into in the hallway hadn’t exactly been discreet, and Rhodey wasn’t referring to him and Romanoff. He shrugged his shoulders. “Lot of money riding on that, you couldn’t fill a guy in?”

“What’s the fun in that?” Clint asked. He felt nauseous, for a moment, feeling that tendril of connection and ghost drift with Rhodey after he had just established a connection with someone else. Phil seemed to sense this. “Hey,” Phil said. Clint sat up and smiled at him. “All right?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“It will diminish,” Phil said.

“See, though, this is another reason why my _no fucking people you drift with_ policy is a good one,” Clint said, looking up at him. “Imagine ghost drifting with an ex.”

“No good,” Phil said. “Let’s get you something to drink, Ranger. We need to get you to a run a simulator protocol.”

“Right,” Clint said. “Got to tick all those boxes - hey, what do I get, by the way?” He leaned in and said that, a little closer to Phil’s ear. “I told you it would work.”

“We can discuss that later,” Phil replied. Clint grinned.

Natasha returned and handed him a bottle of water. He chugged it down and she smiled at him. “I’ve thought of a name,” Clint said.

“Oh?”

“Black Widow,” Clint replied. He thought - he was pretty sure - he was in good stead, here, especially with the joke that Natasha had made earlier. When she didn’t respond immediately, though, he began to backtrack, “I mean, people are going to say it, anyway, so-”

“No,” Natasha said. “It is good. Spider is a good...image.”

“I thought so,” Clint replied. He met her eyes - he wanted to make sure she understood the double meaning of the name. She shook her head at him, and he smiled at her. Right, then. Very good.

Later he asked for Phil to give him a blow job - there were plenty of things that he had wanted, certainly, but this had happened before he and Phil were officially a couple so he didn’t think he could really pull any of those out. After carefully wiping his mouth with a handkerchief - because of course he had one, Phil Coulson was an adult-sized Boy Scout - Phil smiled at him. “I know there are more interestings things you thought about requesting,” he said. His voice was a little husky and Clint felt his breath hitch.

“Uh, well,” he said. World was ending, he told himself. “Yeah. Yeah, there are.”

“Good,” Phil said.


	5. Chapter 5

**Coulson**  
Coulson was exacerbated and very low on caffeine and sleep when he said it. Fortunately he would never have to admit it to anyone because of how it worked out. “Why don’t you get in it?” he said, picking his head up off from his elbow.

Stark was sitting across from him, ranting about how they weren’t going to put Barton and Romanoff and certainly not Odinsen and Rogers in the Mark-IV - for a variety of reasons, some of which seemed coherent, some of which weren’t. “What?”

“Why. Don’t. You. Pilot. The. Damn. Thing,” Coulson said. He didn’t blink. Stark didn’t blink.

Finally, Stark said. “With who?”

Coulson clenched his jaw. “Banner,” he said, instead of _fuck if I care._ He supposed, at the time, his thinking was that he would get Stark off of his ass. Let him try - let him get a taste of the other end of things. Then they could put Barton and Romanoff in the Mark-IV.

Stark and Banner had been practically up each other’s asses since they met. There were plenty of people making jokes about how they were completely drift compatible - Coulson had overheard a few of them, and it made him wince when he thought about his crew and how they would try and pick up civilians in bars.

Stark and Banner bickered and fought and blew things up for science. Pepper told Coulson that Banner seemed to fill a sort of hole that Tony needed, someone who could keep up with his more theoretical prattling - Rhodey had a degree in engineering, but ever since he had switched over to piloting and then Jaeger piloting he had become far more focused on the mechanical, practical side of things. “It’s really quite cute, until Bruce starts playing around in kaiju guts.”

“They are fairly disgusting,” Coulson replied. Pepper had shrugged her shoulders.

“He just doesn’t like organic things,” she replied. She wrinkled her nose slightly. It was a strange peek into the relationship between Pepper Potts and Tony Stark. Coulson shook his head. That was a whole other font of Shatterdome speculation - and he certainly had his own.

Before the two scientists got ready for a test run in the drift, Coulson had slept and had some coffee and realized that Fury or Rhodes was going to intercept him and march him straight in for a psych evaluation. He darted through the corridors and was careful not to run into them on his way to the drift testing room. Might as well take it that far, at least. Hell, he could maybe get Banner to answer the Pepper Potts question - get him in on the cut.

“You’ve lost it,” Sitwell said, sitting in the chair in the control room. Stark and Banner were both seated and were actually getting ready for the pons. “They haven’t even trained-”

“They’re geniuses,” Coulson said. What else was he going to say?

Stark looked strangely puffed up - and fuck, he’d probably been waiting for someone to tell him he could go into one of the Jaegers the whole damn time. Banner looked like he was going to throw up. It was a much more intelligent reaction. They had to really be close if Stark was actually able to convince him to do this.

“Uh, Major Coulson?” Banner asked, as a technician snapped the pons nodes onto his head.

“Dr. Banner?” Coulson asked, but Stark looked over at him and smiled, and so Banner shook his head.

“Let’s do this, gentlemen,” Sitwell said, and Rhodes appeared in the doorway and nodded at Stark, who gave him a thumbs up sign.

“This has got to be the-” Rhodey said, but Sitwell cut him off.

“Initiating drift sequence,” Sitwell said, and he pressed several buttons. Rhodes moved next to Coulson and shook his head.

“I cannot believe you’re indulging-” Rhodey said. “And Fury thinks you’re out of your head. I think it just might work. Isn’t any crazier than the damn kaiju.”

Coulson had watched plenty of people enter the Drift. It was always odd, though, to see the fluttering of eyelashes, the strange ways that their lips and other facial muscles would twitch, and then the moment when their expressions settled and were as similar as could be expected from two different people.

“Neural Handshake confirmed,” Sitwell said, arching his eyebrow. Rhodes punched Coulson lightly in the arm and grinned - confirming, for Coulson, that Stark had just been waiting for this.

“Banner? Stark?” Coulson asked.

“Right as rain,” Stark replied, and he smirked slightly. Banner didn’t reply, just stared straight ahead and nodded slightly. “Er, right hemisphere engaged.”

“Left hemisphere engaged,” Banner said.

Coulson arched an eyebrow. He was going to have to pass this off as a very good idea that he had been really thinking about.

“Well, fuck me,” said Fury, entering the room. It was an unusual slip for him. He pursed his lips together when Sitwell and Hill turned. Both of them shook their heads - they hadn’t seen anything, their looks said, heard anything. “Don’t look too smug, Coulson, they’re both scientists. We’re going to have to see how they do in the simulator-”

“Due respect, sir, but I think both of them have significant video gaming experience,” Rhodes said.

“Not too mention whether they can actually move the damn thing,” Fury said.

Coulson nodded - that was going to be the real test. He’d trained to pilot, himself, he knew what it required and the type of shape you had to be in. Stark was no slouch - he liked to pretend that he was naturally fit, but he was working out at some point during the eighteen-to-twenty hours that he was awake. Banner, on the other hand, had been confined into what was basically a ten by ten fortified enclosure for the past six months because a former SHIELD Marshall had decided he needed to break up the relationship between him and his daughter. “Well,” Coulson said. “We can get them into shape. We have two teams ready to deploy.”

* * *

**Bruce**

“Here’s the thing,” Bruce said. “I’m really flattered, but, uh...I’ve spent a lot of time developing this calm exterior.” He flinched.

“What do you have?” Tony asked, sitting on the counter and drinking the smoothie the robot had made from him. “Anger? Rage? Anxiety? Panic attacks? I’ve been through all of that.”

He unbuttoned his shirt, revealing the mottled, angry scars he had got in Afghanistan/Pakistan - despite having the most advanced technology in the world, the Army and Air Force were still unsure as to the exact location. “Took the shrapnel out with no anaesthetic. Kept me in a cave for three months.” Water boarded me. Electrocuted me. Hooked me up to a car battery to keep some shrapnel fragments from reaching my heart. Details, though.

“I remember reading about that,” Bruce said. “I, uh...” He paused. Tony just nodded at him, wanted to impress on him that they were going to do it and that Tony was going to know all about it soon enough. And, really, Bruce was just about to give in, if only to shut Tony up and prove they weren’t drift compatible. “When I was eight, I saw my dad kill my mother.. I-”

Tony reached and clasped his upper arm. His eyes were large and warm. “I can take it.”

“OK,” Bruce said. He still winced.

As it turned out, Tony knew - Tony was stronger than he gave himself credit for. He took on the barrage of things that Bruce sent in his direction, his father’s hand hitting him, the blood staining the sidewalk, the way his mother used to hold him...and then loneliness, and rage, and confronting his father in jail. His father’s grin when he got out, the way he had just walked in front of Bruce like he had a right to hit him again, restrain him - _I had to,_ Bruce thought, _I had to…_

_Of course you did. It’s called self-defense for a reason._

_But he was-_

_And then there was pain, so much pain in his chest and he felt like it was on fire and getting crushed at the same time. He opened his eyes and saw faces staring down at him, one laughing. He felt fingers in his chest cavity - God, fuck, someone was holding a bleeder- and he deserved this, he deserved this because his own weapons were being used against his own troops, his best friend, all of those young men and women who died - what had he been thinking, the Fun-Vee? They were dead and someone was wiggling a finger in his chest and-_

_You make it through this. You come out the other end and you save the world._

_But he was-_

Together. Put back together, it seemed. Later Bruce would marvel how it was just as Clint had said it would be - complete emptiness at the same time that you felt like you had been made whole. Maybe there was something to Aristotle and Plato’s theory, maybe they had been cut in half at some point. Maybe they were all just searching for their other half.

When they were left alone, Bruce bent over and put his head in his hands.

“Fuck, Bruce,” Tony said, immediately turning to him and grinning. “I told you, I know you don’t want it-”

“No,” Bruce said. “I just couldn’t imagine-”

“But it did work. She’s going to be ours.”

“If we can pilot here - Tony, you have seen the Rangers, they’re...” Bruce waved his hand over his thin frame, “the weight of the drive suit, and the-”

“We’ll just have to start putting some protein in our smoothies,” Tony said. He wrapped his arm around Bruce’s shoulder and smiled. _I’ll do this,_ Bruce thought, _I’ll do this for him - because he is my friend and because he believes in me._

Thor

“No. Way.” Jane’s eyebrows raised almost into her forehead as she looked at her iPhone. Thor cocked his head in her direction. He had been sitting, reading, in a ratty easy chair that Selvig had found somewhere and dragged into the lab - much to Stark’s chagrin.

“What?”

“The reason Stark and Banner aren’t here is because Coulson told Stark that if he was going to be such a bitch about how to put into the Mark-IV - why is he being a bitch?”

“Steve and I are in Valkyrie and he refused to put some crazy Commie Bastard in his child, especially since she alleged he had a cunt-” Thor said. Darcy and Jane winced, while Selvig laughed. “That is not a good word?”

“Americans tend to be quite sensitive about it,” Jane said.

“You are sensitive about it,” Thor replied.

“I tried to reclaim cunt punt for feminism, once…” Jane said, and shook her head. “Anyway, then he got really pissy when he realized that left Morgenstern and Chau-”

“They suck,” Thor said. Darcy laughed and Jane smiled.

“So Coulson told him that he should pilot the damn thing himself! And they’re letting him! With Banner!”

“What?” Thor and Darcy asked, at the same time. Selvig laughed.

“They are hardly in shape to-” Thor began.

“They would name that thing the dorkiest possible thing ever, it would be amazing,” Darcy said.

“They’re running a simulator,” Jane said. “Right now. As we speak.”

“They were compatible?” Thor asked.

“Of course they were,” Darcy said, “You’ve seen the two of them-”

“They have no training,” Thor said.

“Geniuses,” Darcy said, and tapped her forehead.

Thor sighed. But then again - how much worse of an idea was it than the other two pilot pairs that had been put together?

* * *

**Tony**

“Bad luck for it not to have a name,” Hill said, leaning against the controls in LOCCENT while Bruce and Tony watched the boot sequence for the Mark-IV. Each of them was scanning the code quickly and with great interest - Tony was not going to let some programming error stop them, some little fluke developed by some nerds so far inland they had no idea what a Jaeger even looked like.

“Yeah, well, probably worse luck if we name it and it doesn’t work out,” Tony replied.

“Iron Hulk,” Bruce said, and Tony looked up for a moment. Bruce kept his eyes on the code as it flashed by, and Tony stared at him for a moment - the way his hair flopped into his face, how large his eyes still looked because he was still a little too thin. He needed someone to adopt him.

“Where’d you get the Hulk thing from?” he asked. He liked the nod to Iron Patriot - his first baby, the one he’d gifted to his best friend.

“He’s big, he’s a brawler,” Bruce said. “Not sleek like the Mark-IIIs. He’s there to smash, you know?”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “That he is.”

He caught Hill with a slight smile on her face. “Boot sequence is complete for Iron Hulk, American Mark-IV Jaeger,” she said into the communication system. “Pilots are headed over to get suited up.”

“You and me, Bruce, we’re going to own this,” Tony said, and slung his arm around Bruce’s shoulder. He flinched and Tony realized he wasn’t used to be touched, or at least hadn’t been touched much in the past six months or so. Tony was going to have to get Pepper on that - sure Ross was part of SHIELD, but not a very useful part, and he was sure there plenty of things he could do to make his life miserable. Threaten to withdraw Stark Industries support, for a start.

“Fuck,” said Bruce, after they changed into the drive suits they’d been measured for - and, sure, Tony had to admit, they were a bit snug. He widened his eyes as a crew came around him and began to help him put on the armor, and he swallowed. “I really think they might just be indulging-”

“Banner, do you know how much these things cost to make?” Tony asked. Bruce shook his head, but Tony could see him doing some quick math. He grinned at him. “We’ve got this - look, this is my baby, I built her, I know how she works, she’s smooth.”

“The piston technology at the joints will make the movements nearly simultaneous with your own,” one of the techs said, clamping the drivesuit spines onto both of them.

“See?” Tony said, and got a wide grin on his face as the helmets were placed on their heads.

Bruce was silent for the rest of the process. He only glanced over at Tony when Sitwell informed them that the neural handshake was being initiated, and he appeared to be very nauseous. “We’re not taking her for a test drive just yet,” Tony said. “Still got the parking brakes on, you’re not going to hurt anyone.”

Bruce nodded - and then there he was.

_Weak, stupid, what makes you think you can do this, son?_ Tony wasn’t sure if it was his father or Ross - both of them, it seemed, sounded the same to Bruce, even smelled the same - thick cigar smoke and aftershave and something fetid.

_We gonna play daddy issues bingo, Bruce?_ He sent a flurry of images - all Howard, all the fucking time, his mother, distant and removed, a nanny, at fourteen! MIT at fifteen! Good riddance.

“We’re got a neural handshake, holding nice and strong,” Sitwell said. That part, Tony knew they could do. It was the next part that was going to be hard. “Let’s get left arm moving, Stark.” Tony picked his arm up and moved it, and, fuck, there was a lot of resistance there. “Right arm, Banner.”

_You’re strong, Bruce, fuck, you spend six months in isolation and you stay with this goddamn program because you believe in it-_ Tony just got white back for that, noise and static. “Right arm, Dr. Banner?”

_Fine! We can play this way-_

_We’re not playing-_

_How mad are you? About everything that’s happened to you? And now someone’s decided to put you in a giant ass robot so you can go and punch 2,000 ton sea monsters!_

_Mad?_

_Haven’t you tried being angry?_ Tony asked, and he sent a wave of it in Bruce’s direction, the anger he’d felt when he found out how his technology was being used and at Yinsen’s death, the anger he’d felt when that thing had destroyed his home, and plenty of old, festering anger as well. _Angry! Hulk smash!_ “Left arm is engaged,” Sitwell said. “Let’s lift up. Good. Down. Meet right arm in fight stance.”

_We’re supposed to have one of those._

_Right, after, what, three sessions in that room?_ Bruce asked.

_You got something, right?_ An image came into Tony’s head and sure, why not?

“Is that a yoga pose?” Rhodey asked, and Tony grinned.

“Gentlemen, let’s engage legs,” Coulson said.

“This might be the hard part,” Tony said.

“Hard part’s over,” Bruce replied.

_No, this is the hard part,_ Tony thought, lifting his leg and feeling like it was about to be pried out of his hip socket. They were definitely going to have to put something into their smoothies.

“I think I saw some movement, Stark - you call that a leg lift?” Rhodes called over the communication line, and Tony reached deep down and pulled from the same feelings that had inspired him when Rhodey had coached him in the MIT gym, when he had been a scrawny, acne riddled eighteen year-old with daddy issues.

_Hulk motherfucking smash!_ Tony thought, and he was pretty sure he heard Bruce giggle next to him.

* * *

**Coulson**

 

“Are you celebrating?” Fury asked. “Because I have to admit, Banner and Stark as a functional Jaeger team…”

“I suppose so,” Coulson said, and poured Fury a glass. “Though they’re not the only ones. Clint and Romanoff pulled a second successful patrol today in Black Widow-”

“Clint?”

Coulson took a long sip of his whiskey and met Fury’s eyes. “Sir, I know it’s inappropriate-”

“You better give me some more whiskey, Major, it seems we are celebrating,” Fury replied.

“Romanoff basically dared him too,” Coulson replied. “Said she didn’t drift with cowards.”

“Huh,” said Fury, and accepted his glass back.

“I took it as a good sign as well,” Coulson said.

“Black Widow, though?” Fury asked.

“Clint’s suggestion,” Coulson replied. “We’ve got the clear from command for Rogers and Odiensen to be added to the on-call, as well.”

“Mmm,” said Fury.

“You’re not certain?” Coulson said.

“I think Odinsen is ready. Rogers...there’s a lot still not dealt with, there. And you know what that can do to a neural handshake,” Fury said. Coulson nodded, but he felt like it wasn’t as much of a problem as it could have been.

“Well. Odinsen seems a good match for him.” He paused, for a moment. “He’s been dating Dr. Foster,”

“Huh,” said Fury. “Bit of a contrast there, isn’t it?” He nodded at Coulson’s glass. “Seems like that sort of thing is in the air, though.” Coulson felt himself blush - he had wished they weren’t going to come back around to that. “Don’t fuck up my Jaeger pilot, Major.”

“I don’t intend to, sir.”

“You’re the one who decided to put Stark and Banner in one of my Jaegers, I could argue you might have some intentions in that regard,” Fury said. He shook his head. “You think Stark’s just been waiting for us to ask?”

“Possibly,” Coulson said, and he sighed. He tried not to think about it too much, these days, but...it should have been him. He should have been one of the pilots from the Mark-I Glory Days. But then, of course, where would that have got him? Drugs and tests and cancer. An early grave. Only three of the Mark-I pilots were cancer free and only one was still piloting.

Which, he wondered, did he really want? Fury gave him a slight smile - you didn’t need to ghost drift to understand another person. “Hard to say, isn’t it?”

* * *

**Clint**

Clint felt his vision go ever so slightly red as he listened in to the communication coming in from LOCCENT. “Slipped right past Solar Prophet and Matador Fury and heading up the coast for you - which one of those rag tag group of fuck-ups you plan on sending out, Fury?”

It had been two weeks since their three Jaeger line-up had been formalized - Odinsen and Rogers in Valkyrie Thunder, he and Romanoff in Black Widow, fucking Stark and Banner in Iron Hulk. They’d each done a full practice run out in the harbor and had been working in the simulators each day. They had also bonded over Stark and Banner as a project - there were sessions in the kwoon that he and Natasha led while Thor and Steve focused on their weight and cardio training. It was amazing the improvement you could get just in two weeks when you fed people shit tons of protein shakes and chicken and made them work out two or three hours a day. Apparently Banner had to requisition new clothes. He wasn’t as pale, either, though whether that was related to the exercise and protein or - well, there was plenty of speculation on what else it could be.

Clint and Natasha had both bet on a polyamorous relationship with both Stark and Pepper Potts.

“Fuck-ups?” Clint asked, and Rhodey shook his head at him.

“Chitauri is a Category IV,” Fury replied, voice even. “I am going to send them all out.”

Clint closed his eyes, exhaled, then nodded.

He watched the video feed of the kaiju that was coming in as it darted on the edge of the Miracle Mile and then back out towards the ocean. It was a big fucker - the first Category IV out of the Breach. And it definitely earned its name, though they all did, in some way. Apparently the SHIELD officials stationed out in the Marinas had little else to do with their time aside from come up with incredibly apt name for kaiju. Chitauri looked like it was bone plated. It was an insectoid nightmare and Clint was willing to bet that its limbs clicked when it moved. It made him think of a giant grasshopper, and, for some reason it seemed to him to really be the stuff out of nightmares. Maybe it was because, like Karloff, the face was almost human.

He had been reading too many K-Science reports lately, too, because all he could think was that it knew to strike at their most vulnerable point, as well. There was no way it could know, though, that the path of least resistance was with their three untested teas. “Hey, don’t psyche yourself up,” Rhodey said, behind him. “Got all jittery on me the first time, too. Now you’re the anchor.”

“I hardly-” Clint began, but he was. He’d found himself grounding Natasha consciously twice and when they reviewed their drift recordings there were plenty of other less conscious instances of it visible as well.

“Get suited up, Ranger,” Fury said, and Clint nodded.

Coulson followed him out to the hall and for once, Clint didn’t care how many people were looking at him or what they were going to say - he generally liked his relationships to be private, but right now? “Clint,” Phil said, and Clint nodded and grabbed at the lapel of his suit - even though he knew how much it would piss Coulson off that it got wrinkled. He kissed him quickly. “I’ve got you, back here.”

“I’ll come back,” Clint said, even though he felt a deep trepidation in his gut - he did, every time, but this...it wasn’t him and Rhodes with Heller and Heller, or meeting in the middle with the Becket brothers. It wasn’t your standard Cat-II. This thing seemed to be able to shoot things out of it, like it was weaponized.

“Good,” Phil said, and Clint kissed him again quickly before darting off.

Natasha was waiting for him in Black Widow’s bay. They had stark, shining black drive suits and one of the techs had added the signature hourglass to the torso. Natasha had appreciated this and dyed her hair to match. “Category IV,” she said.

“Biggest one yet,” Clint replied.

“You are nervous?”

“I’m always nervous,” Clint said.

“Now you have someone to be nervous about,” Natasha said.

“There is that,” Clint said, as the spine for his drive suit was snapped on. He wasn’t going to say anything that wasn’t true - we’ve got this, we’re gonna own this, any of that shit. Natasha had shown him, in the drift, that one of the reasons she had trusted him was because he had been honest with her from the start, even over little things. “I guess I just...I always go into it expecting the worst to happen? So then, when I come back, it’s like...yay?”

“Yay?” Natasha asked, and then she shook her head. “Nevermind.” She led him into the Conn Pod, having taken the position on the right - and not too many people had argued that her fighting style and presence in the Jaeger shouldn’t dominate.

The Mark-III was designed with the detachable head for the deployment into the harbor. Clint hated this part. Rhodey had once tried to make him feel better by describing the flight simulations they had put him through in the Air Force, but it hadn’t really helped. Clint had only rode a roller coaster once and he had vomited all over his father - and, yeah, the retribution for that probably had nothing to do with his aversion.

The techs hooked them into the Conn Pod and there was Hill, on the other end. “Black Widow prepared to disengage and connect?”

“Black Widow is ready for the big drop,” Clint replied.

“Da,” said Natasha.

“This is real,” he said to her, just as they lurched down and he screamed a little bit - no, really, he screamed like a girl.

“Indeed,” Natasha said, and she had a feral smile on her face.

* * *

**Coulson**

Coulson watched the feeds on the various monitors, but he was sort of watching through metaphorically splayed fingers. “I want Iron Hulk holding the Miracle mile,” Fury intoned, as Iron Hulk was brought out into the harbor by the choppers and the Mark-IIIs strode out from their bay. “Valkyrie Thunder, you will take point and you will call it, Captain. Black Widow, you back them up. Figure out how to handle this kaiju and watch for any offense, they’ve been getting crafty lately.”

“Sir,” came four voices, one of them Clint’s.

They arranged themselves in an inverted triangle, Valkyrie leading ever so slightly and following Sitwell’s directions from LOCCENT as the kaiju moved in on the city. The kaiju was slick and came in and out of their radar range - it was thinner than many of the kaiju they had recently seen, but also longer. Chitauri was an appropriate name - even on just the basic sonar, Coulson could see the segments it had. It had a more terrestrial look than any they had faced in some time.

It took its time in the water, too. Rogers didn’t play games with it, though, and held the Jaeger’s still. Coulson felt himself wanting them to make a move but he knew that patience was definitely the way forward with this kaiju. It had been aggressive just moving up the coast. This one wanted a fight.

Finally it gave up and burst from the water. The cry was high pitched and harsh. It barrelled straight for Valkyrie. “Widow, grab its’ ass,” Rogers called.

“Da,” Romanoff said. They lunged for the end of the kaiju but it managed to flick the back segment out of their way. Black Widow recovered, though, and Coulson appreciated what a feat that was. He glanced over at Fury, but he just had his lips pressed together. No point in celebrating such a minor victory, anyway.

Chitauri was fast, heavier than it looked, and more than willing to expend its offensive weaponry. Shard like protrusions fired from as projectiles, and Valkyrie was dodging and weaving, but just barely missing them as she tried to land punches in. Black Widow pivoted around the kaiju’s rear, trying to get a foothold, but it was always just a critical quarter-step ahead.

At Fifteen minutes in Black Widow pivoted, kicked, and missed. Chitauri was able to get to strong hold on Valkyrie Thunder and began to wrestle with it.

“Right, feeling a little stupid just standing back here, and I can just see all the of the Tweeters and bloggers and whatnot,” Stark said, as Black Widow tried to get the kaiju off the other Jaeger so i could right itself. “Stark stands around in most advanced Jaeger on planet, watches everyone’s mom’s favorite blonde pilots get torn to pieces.”

“Stark, I said hold-”

“Marshal, all these years, you should know I don’t follow directions well,” Stark replied. Iron Hulk strode into the battle, and Coulson knew what Fury was thinking - they weren’t ready, they didn’t have the endurance for a full tilt fight, they were going to destroy the most advanced Jaeger on the planet in its’ first outing.

The Mark-IV was interesting to watch. While more fluid and dynamic than the Mark-IIIs, Iron Hulk was truly a hulk. Dr. Banner had been right. It had a lot of weight to throw around and seemed designed to just wreck things. It lumbered over to where the kaiju was and pulled it off of Valkyrie Thunder by the protrusions on its back. The kaiju roared - it hadn’t anticipated that the Jaeger would be managed to wrench its’ bulk around like that. Iron Hulk whipped it into the ground, allowing the other Jaegers to recover.

The kaiju was really pissed, then, and the three of them worked to guide it out into deeper water, away from the city, and then mounted a coordinated attack. Rogers called it easily, maneuvering the Jaegers and getting them to use each of their unique weapons arrays to weaken the kaiju.

Stark could only take it for so long, of course, and, judging from the neural handshake, Banner was right along their with it. “We could be fucking tactical here, Cap, or we could just pound the shit out of this thing.”

“I don’t think-” Rogers voice said, but Iron Hulk picked the kaiju up with both hands and whacked it sideways into the water, then whacked it in the other direction - almost like it was tossing around a doll.

Black Widow came in with the slicing, plasma augmented knives at the end of its hands and began to tear at the kaiju. “Smash,” said Thor, over the comm. “Everyone else is-”

“Engage the hammer,” said Rogers.

Coulson raised his eyebrows when there was a crackle of electricity from the plasma array of the hammer and the kaiju jolted from the strike with it. Valkyrie Thunder pivoted and then hammered again, aiming from where the creatures spine should be.

“These things, might have dual spines or none at all, given the bony exoskeleton,” Banner interjected. “Just got for the head!” Coulson had to smile slightly, at that. Who had said it was a bad idea to put him into the Conn Pod?

It took another ten or fifteen minutes of battle, pulling them into a second hour. Valkyrie struck the kaiju while Iron Hulk held it and Black Widow held the perimeter of the attack zone. The cry was anguished, and the creature soon sunk into the water.

Coulson exhaled and it felt like the first time that he had breathed in quite a long while. _Washed up,_ he thought. Fuck ups. _We’ll see now._

* * *

**Thor**

Thor was not prepared for the victory celebration because he had never had one.

The last time he had returned from being in a Jaeger it was on a stretcher. A medic was examining his pupils and they were attempting to determine how brain damaged he was. Someone else was tearing him out of his drive suit. Later, people spoke at him about Loki would have to be put on criminal lockdown and wondered, as he sat before them, if there was enough of him left to warrant treatment. He had been unable to speak or react. It was only after they gave him several drugs was he able to articulate that he was very present, very much alive.

Now he strode into the Shatterdome alongside his partner in the rich navy of their drive suits. Both held their heads high and were surrounded by the newly assigned crew of Valkyrie Thunder, the techs who had got them in their drive suit, and LOCCENT control. People were patting him on the back and congratulating him. It was heady, and he felt as though it wasn’t quite real.

As more people surrounded them he angled Steve in front of him. Steve had been their Captain, had called the battle and united them with his understanding of tactics and fighting technique. Without his leadership it would have taken them significantly longer to bring down the beast.

He met Jane’s eyes from across the room and she beamed at him. Months ago, he would have laughed at someone if this was how they told him things would result for him.

She wove through the crowd towards him. He squeezed her hand. “I couldn’t really watch,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, “I understand.”

“But I might watch the replay. On youtube. Darcy bookmarked it.”

“Of course she did,” Thor said, and then beamed at Jane.

* * *

**Tony**

“You really didn’t think it would work, did you?” Tony asked. He, Pepper, Rhodey, Bruce, Clint, and Coulson had pulled back from the victory celebration and climbed up to one of the walkways near Iron Hulk’s head. Rhodey had brought a twenty-four rack of beer and Clint had found some whiskey. Tony sipped from the bottle and passed it to Bruce.

“No,” said Coulson. “But you don’t share that with anyone. It was my genius plan.” Clint squeezed his thigh. Coulson was a little intoxicated, and Tony was pleased to see him enjoying himself - pleased to see he had finally consummated things with Barton. How long had they been dancing around each other?

“I feel like I’m going to die,” Bruce said. “All of my muscles are screaming.”

“Another beer,” Rhodey said, and handed it to him. Bruce glanced at the whiskey in one hand, the beer in the other, and shrugged his shoulders. Rhodey clapped him on the back. “You won’t be able to walk straight for days, a hangover isn’t going to make too much difference.”

“What would you know about that?” Tony asked. Rhodey rolled his eyes and inclined his head towards Clint.

“Hey!” Clint protested, but Coulson just shook his head.

Tony glanced over at Pepper, who had removed her heels and sat them down next to her. “I’m a big damn hero,” he said.

“You were before,” she replied.

Tony shrugged his shoulders and looked at the Jaeger - his baby, the results of hours of welding, drafting, planning, and supervising construction. Iron Hulk, highlighted in green and a bit of gold, massive and foreboding. He had watched the clip of them whacking the kaiju around like a stuffed animal and had to grin - that had been one hundred per cent Banner, harnessing anger that he had never thought would be productive before.

“You left your new partner behind,” Rhodey said, and he jabbed a finger into Clint’s chest.

“Naw,” he said. “She’s down with Thor, Steve, Darcy, Jane, and Selvig,” he said. “She was smiling.”

Tony nodded - he could confirm it. She had been laughing with Steve about something, some joke he had made, and had pushed some of her hair behind her ear as she sipped at the vodka and soda water someone had made for her.

“If anyone asks,” Coulson said. “I think I’m going to say it was all my idea.”


End file.
